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A STORY OF LOVE ADD MALICE. ■' 


BY LAURA 0. FORD. 


NEW YORK: 

NORMAN L. MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 
24 & 26 Vande water St. 







A STORY OF LOVE AND MALICE 



BY LAURA C. FORD. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by Nor- 
man L. Munro, in the office of the Librarian of 
Congress, at Washington , D. C. 



NEW YORK: 

NORMAN L. MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 

84 & 26 VANDEWATER ST, 





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COPYRIGHTED. 


ELEOTEA. 

A STORY OF LOVE AND MALICE. 


By LAURA C. FORD. 

CHAPTER I. 

A CRUEL STROKE. 

Brightly shone the sunshine of the March morning, 
turning the sky into a plate of gold, with the sun itself 
blazing like a great jew T el set in the east. The budding 
trees and the springing grass below gleamed in the radi- 
ance and seemed to rejoice in its unusual warmth — for 
there was not a breath of air stirring through all that 
golden splendor. 

Nature was pervaded by that beautiful but ominous calm 
which tells that a storm is not far distant. 

Down the turnpike road, glistening in the pure light, 
clattered two horses, each bearing a graceful rider. 

Those riders were. a young man and a young woman. 

The young man was large, and was bronzed by the suns 
of foreign lands, and the young woman was queenly, and 
was as fair as the morning. 

On they cantered, into the edge of the forest through 
which the road ran. 

The lady’s mettled steed suddenly shied and reared. 

He had been frightened by a figure which had unexpect- 
edly emerged into sight from among the great trees skirt- 
ing the road— a figure wrapped in a scarlet hood and cloak, 
from which a dark, gypsy -like face looked. 

The lady on the back of the startled horse, forgetting 
herself, perhaps, in the excitement of the moment, raised 
her whip and brought it sharply down on the red cloak. 

“Get out of my way !” she said, angrily. “Don’t you 
see, fool, that you are frightening my horse?” 

The hand of the gentleman riding beside her, however, 


2 ELECTRA. 

•Was on her rein holding the startled animal with a grasp 
of iron. _ 

“There is no danger,” he said, reassuringly, and then 
speaking to the red-cloaked figure which was standing 
stock still there on the side of the road, he added : 

“ There is no harm done.” 

With that assurance, and with his hand still on the rein 
of the now subdued horse, he led the animal past the ob- 
ject which had occasioned his alarm, and in a minute the 
riders were cantering away at the same pace which had 
been interrupted, with the shadows of the forest trees fall- 
ing darkly over them. 

The girl in the red cloak stood in the road where they 
had left her staring after them, with her great black eyes 
as brilliant as diamonds and with a dark flush on her 
dusky face. 

She thrust her hand from out the folds of her red cloak, 
and shook her fist after the retreating figures, while she 
said in a voice which the rising tears of passion rendered 
hoarse : 

“You struck me with your whip, Kate Vance, as if I had 
been a dog ; and ordered me out of your way, and I’ll re- 
member the debt, and pay you for it as sure as my name 
is Electra Dean! You will find that I will get in your 
way instead of out of it, Kate Vance ! As sure as you live 
you will find that there has been harm done, although 
your handsome friend says not !” 

The tears that welled up from passion into her eyes 
choked her voice, and blinded her so that she could not 
see any longer the two toward whom she was shaking her 
clinched fist, and when the obscuring drops fell from her 
lids to her flushed cheeks, the horses and riders had dis- 
appeared around a bend in the road. 

Electra Dean turned and went on her way, but her eyes 
had not lost their angry glitter, nor her voice its angry 
ring, as she muttered : 

“Yes, I will pay you back, Kate Vance, as sure as you 
live, for daring to strike me with your whip as if I had 
been a dog. As sure as you live you will find that I will 
get in your way, and that you can’t drive me out of it! 
No— not if you brought every whip in the United States 
to help you !” 

So saying, she went swiftly on her way, her small feet un- 
consciously planting a series of vicious stamps on the ground, 
while her passion was planting the seeds of a vengeful pur- 
pose in her soul, which was destined to bear a crop of 
thorns to be reaped by beautiful Kate Vance, the haughty 
heiress of “Silver Bend,” the broadest, richest domain in 
Kentucky. 




ELECTRA. 


8 


And that same beautiful and haughty heiress had no sus- 
picion of the fact that, in yielding to the momentary pas- 
sion which swept over her when she lifted her slender whip 
to let it fall on the shoulders of Elect ra Dean, that she had 
made a dangerous and unscrupulous enemy, whose malice 
would follow her long after she herself had forgotten its 
cause. 


CHAPTER II. 

A NIGHT OF STORM. 

All day long the sun burned like a ball of fire in the sky, 
and not a breath of air stirred through the March day un- 
til near nightfall. 

Then the wind seemed to throw off the fetters which had 
held it all the day long, and floated here and there on 
wings that were heavy with dampness, uttering low, shud- 
dering sounds. 

Like a ball of fire the sun went down in the west, and 
seemed to have ignited the clouds, for they glowed like 
flames of red and yellow, and the horizon presented the ap- 
pearance of a great conflagration. 

Then it died out, like a fire that lias run its course, and a 
thick dark cloud spread over it, as if it was the smoke from 
the smoldering embers. 

Louder rose the voice of the wind, and swifter grew its 
wings, until it groaned and shrieked among the tree-tops, 
bowing them down, and wrenching off the branches with 
the might of its power. 

Rapidly the sky darkened, and the night fell, and through 
the gloom poured floods of rain and hail. 

The drops gathered into streams and rushed down the 
sides of the great hills, and beat upon the little cabin in 
the ravine which sheltered the heads of Electra Dean and 
her old grandmother, commonly called Granny Dean. 

The two were sitting together in front of the large fire- 
place, the stones of which, having long ago lost much of 
their cement, were gaping like snaggled teeth, and were 
smoked to the blackness, and in some places to the polish 
of ebony. 

“And you say that Kate Vance cut you with her whip?” 
the old woman said, turning her grizzled head, which was 
covered by a handkerchief knotted under her chin, toward 
her granddaughter, and lifting her cracked voice so as to 
be heard above the roar of the storm. 

The young girl clinched the small brown hands that 
were lying in her lap, and the red firelight flickering over 
her showed the angry glitter that was in her black eyes 


i ELECTHA. 

and the angry flush that was on her drawn face deepen ill 
intensity. 

“Yes, she did!” she answered sharply, through her 
teeth, that gleamed between her lips like those of an en- 
raged wild animal. “But I’ll make her pay for it, 
granny ; as sure as I live I’ll make her pay for it 1” 

“That’s the way to talk. You’ve got your father’s 
blood in you!” exclaimed the old woman, exultingly. 
“ Nobody ever struck George Dean that didn’t get back 
blow for' blow !” 

“ But he got ablow at last that killed him,” the girl said, 
turning her glittering eyes toward the fire, and drawing 
her black brows down over them. 

“Yes, a curse on the black fiend that did it!” the old 
woman said, her palsied body beginning to shake from 
head to foot with rising passion. “ That’s another grudge 
that I would like to settle with somebody,” she went on, 
her skinny fingers working nervously on the head of the 
stout cane she was holding between her knees. “ The nig- 
ger belonged to Judge Sylvane, and he had money enough 
to clear him on the plea that he had acted in self-defense ; 
but he had sense enough not to keep him in my reach. 
He sent him away down South somewhere.” 

“Where is Judge Sylvane?” Electra asked, her mind 
diverted for a minute from her own grievance. “He 
moved his family South, too, didn’t he?” 

“I don’t know where he went— as I’ve told you a hun- 
dred times,” the old woman replied, snappishly. “If he 
had stayed about here I would have tormented him well, 
I promise you !” 

All this time the storm had been raging furiously ; the 
rain and hail had been pelting the old roof above them ; the 
wind had been wrenching the moldy shingles from it, and 
had been sprinkling it with twigs torn from the groaning 
trees. 

As the old woman ended her sentence there was a loud 
crash, as if made by a falling tree, and a half minute after- 
ward there came a sharp knock on the cabin door. 

“Good Lord ! Who can that be?” Granny Dean ejaculat- 
ed, rising with an effort from the ragged chair on which 
she had been sitting, and leaning heavily on her cane, with 
her shriveled face turned toward the door, which Electra 
was unbolting. 

As she drew back the wooden bar, it flew open, urged 
by the strong wind, with so much violence that the girl 
was almost knocked down by it, and as she reeled on her 
feet, some one passed in, as if he, too, were driven bv the 
wind, and swiftly closed and secured the door again be- 
hind him, 


ELECTRA. 


5 


He was a large man, dripping with rain, and glistening 
I with hail, and presenting a generally wind-blown appear- 
i ance, as if lie were an embodiment of the storm. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said, catching his breath which 
i the wind had evidently taken. “ But you seel was caught 
i out in the storm, and had no time to wait on ceremony ; for 
I the trees were falling about me in every direction; and I 
| was very glad when my horse brought me to your door for 
shelter.” 

! He had taken off his hat, and holding it in his hand, he 
had advanced toward the fire, and stood before it on the 
broken hearth, with the ruddy glow of the blazing wood 
lighting up his large form and his strong, pleasing face. 

He caught Electra’s eye as she stood leaning against the 
: rough wall, and a look of recognition flashed into his 
| countenance. 

“ It was you we met this morning,” he said, speaking in 
| an impulsive way. “You were the person in the red 
I cloak. I recognize your eyes.” 

“ Yes, I was the person who received a lash across the 
shoulders from Miss Vance’s whip,” she responded, her 
voice sounding very harsh, although it was naturally me- 
lodious. 

As she spoke, she moved from her position against the 
wall, and drew forward a rickety chair for the accommo- 
dation of the guest. 

Granny Dean stiffly resumed her own chair, and fixed 
her bright gray eyes suspiciously on the young gentleman 
as he sank into the proffered seat, while Electra placed 
herself again upon the stool from which she had arisen 
to open the door. 

Notwithstanding the hard, defiant look that was on her 
dusky face, the young man seemed to find something 
strongly attractive in it, for he never removed his eyes 
from it for fully five minutes— during which she had kept 
it turned persistently toward the fire — not even in answer- 
ing the questions with which Granny Dean plied h’im. 

“ It was you, then, that was with Kate Vance when she 
struck ’Lee to-day, was it?” she asked. 

“ I am sorry to say that in her sudden fright Miss Vance 
was rude,” he said, deprecatingly ; whereat Electra shrug- 
ged her shoulders, and scowled at the fire. 

“ I was very sorry for the act, and I have no doubt Miss 
Vance was also,” he went on, using still that deprecating 
tone, and keeping his eyes still on the dusky face turned 
toward the fire. 

“ If she ain’t sorry for it, the time may come when ” 

The old woman’s cracked voice was suspended in the 


6 


ELECTRA. 


middle of her menacing sentence by a flash from her grand- 
daughter’s black eyes, and by the sharp reminder: 

“ Granny, it was my shoulders Miss Vance struck. And 
please, don’t you have anything to say about it.” 

The young gentleman also caught a momentary glance 
from the flashing eyes as they returned to their contempla- 
tion of the fire, and he seemed to feel that he had better 
not have anything to say about the insult she had received 
either ; so a minute or so of embarrassed silence fell over the 
group on which the firelight flickered, and over which the 
rain and hail pattered. 

“ Mrs. Dean,” he said, evidently surprising the old wom- 
an very much by calling her name; “ you have, of course 
forgotten me, if indeed you ever remembered me, but I rec- 
ollect you very distinctly. I used to live in this neighbor- 
hood when I was a boy. I am Ray Sylvane, the only child 
of Judge Sylvane who lived five miles from here at Beech- 
wood Farm.” 

The old woman’s gray eyes emitted sparks like flint 
struck from steel. 

“I’ve got good cause to remember the Sylvanes,” she 
said as sharply as her toothless jaws would permit her 
voice to sound. “It was through them that I lost my only 
child— ’Lec’$ father — Judge Sylvane’s negro killed him. 
And Judge Sylvane’s money cleared the murderer! Ah, 
I’ve got good cause to remember the Sylvanes !” 

A look of real distress was in the young man’s face, on 
which the color came and went in swift waves. 

He could have kicked himself for his stupidity in men- i 
tioning his name ; for his stupidity for forgetting that corn- 
field tragedy which had so greatly interested - him at the 
time, and which seemed to interest him more now than it 
had ever done before, as he turned his eyes involuntarily 
upon the daughter of the murdered man. 

He remembered that it had been clearly proven at the 
trial that the negro had acted in self-defense, and he had ? 
rejoiced at the time at his acquittal. Now, looking at that 
singularly graceful figure on the stool, he felt that he i 
would be glad if he had been hanged for it. But he didn’t 
say so, and hastened to change the conversation by re- , 
marking on the continued violence of the storm. 

No one responded to the remark, and five minutes after- 
ward, when the conscious silence had grown unbearable to 
him, the old woman rose stiffly to her feet. 

“ If you see fit to do so, you may stay here by the fire,” 
she said ; adding to her granddaughter : 

“Come, ’Lee, it’s time for us to go to bed.” And the 
young girl arose and followed her as she hobbled from the 


ELECTRA. * 

room and disappeared through the doorway of another 
small chamber opening into it. 

When the gray dawn broke over the drenched earth, 
Electra Dean stole softly into the room where the young 
gentleman was still sleeping on the bare floor before the 
yawning fireplace, and she bent and peered curiously down 
into his bearded face. 

He stirred uneasily, and she caught the mutter : 

‘ ‘ On the tenth of April, Kate ; on our wedding-day !” 

“So that’s what is on hand!” Electra Dean muttered, 
her teeth gleaming through her parted lips in an unpleas- 
ant way. “ But as sure as you live, Kate Vance, you will 
not marry Ray Sylvane on the tenth of April 1” 

Then she bent over him again, and waked him with no 
gentle touch on the shoulder. 


CHAPTER III. 

A HAUNTING FACE. 

“ What a singularly attractive creature that black-eyed 
girl is !” Ray Sylvane muttered, as he picked his way over 
the drenched ground, stepping from rock to rock on his 
way to Silver Bend the morning after the storm — for natu- 
rally enough he had not been able to find the horse he had 
left untethered at the cabin door. 

All along the mile of mud and slush that lay between the 
cabin of Granny Dean and the home of his betrothed, he 
was thinking of the gypsy-like face and graceful form he 
had seen the firelight flickering over the night before. He 
made no effort to banish the image that haunted his mem- 
ory with its dusky beauty, but if l\e had tried to do so, it 
is not probable that he would have succeeded — it had taken 
such a strong hold upon his fancy. 

He was a poet and an artist ; and the girl with her wild, 
picturesque Beauty had aroused a deep admiration in his 
imaginative nature; and as he went on, unconsciously 
picking his way so as to avoid pools of water and mud and 
i slush, he made a picture of her as a gypsy queen, with 
her dusky subjects in the background, and with the light 
of the camp fire throwing a glow over her, as the cabin fire 
j had done the night before. Again she was Cleopatra re- 
! dining under the silken sails of her vessel ; again she was 
a Spanish beauty ; again the Light of the Harem. And 
i so, by the time he reached Silver Bend she had been the 
model of more pictures than he was likely ever to paint, 
for his industry by no means equaled his talent. 

As he walked up the avenue of pine-trees Miss Vance 
came hurrying to meet him down the snowy shell walk. 

1 “Oh, Ray, I have been so unhappy about you!” she ex- 
I 


elec tea. 


d 

claimed reaching her white hands out so as to place one on 
either of his shoulders, and looking eagerly into his face 
with her clear blue eyes. “Your horse came home this 
morning saddled and bridled, and I have been imagining 
all sorts of terrible things. What happened to you ?” 

He took her hands from his shoulders, and held them in 
his own as he answered laughingly : 

“I was caught by the storm, and in the darkness and 
confusion I lost my way, and in default of better lodg- 
ings I took shelter in old Mrs. Dean’s cabin and stayed 
there all night, and here I am safe and sound !” 

Miss Vance laughed, showing her strong white teeth to 
great advantage : 

“I wonder that you survived to tell the tale,” she said, 
commiseratingly. “ What a terrible night you must have 
passed in that old shanty, with the crone and her half- 
savage granddaughter for company.” 

The consciousness of what very interesting companion- 
ship he had found in that same granddaughter, brought 
a glow to his bronzed face, but he did not mention the 
fact. 

Strangely enough, a feeling of guilt came over him, 
Which made him avert his eyes from the face of his be- 
trothed as he walked on beside her to the house. 

He remembered how many pictures he had made of that 
same “half savage” as he came along that morning. He 
remembered how persistently her face had haunted his 
thoughts, and how the fairer one of his betrothed had 
never once arisen between it and him. 

It was that which had caused the feeling of guilt which 
had swept over him. It was that which caused him to 
turn after a minute with a great deal of tenderness toward 
his companion, and say : 

‘ ‘ So you were uneasy about me, Kate ? I am afraid 
you care a great deal more about me than I deserve. You 
iove me a great deal, do you not ?” 

They were entering the stately house by this time, and 
she did not answer until they were seated together on a 
sofa in the luxurious parlor, with her white hands still 
imprisoned in his. 

“ Yes, Ray, I care a great deal about you,” she said, hei 
queenly head bent slightly forward, and her clear eyes 
looking into his own. “ My love for you is the strongest 
thing in my nature, except my pride and temper.” 

“It should be stronger than anything,” he responded, iv. 
a slightly aggrieved tone; “seeing that in three week® 
time we are to be married.” | 

$he threw back her handsome head and laughed , pleas 


electra: & 

ed, perhaps, to see that her words had nettled him, before 
she replied, which she did, seriously enough : 

“ This morning, when I was so tortured with uneasiness 
about you, I realized, for the first time, that I would 
rather give up my life than you. And yet, Ray, I would 
do it, and break my heart about it afterward, perhaps, if 
anything— any act of yours, I mean— occurred, to bring my 
pride or my temper up between us. I know myself so 
well, that I know I would give you up in either case.” 

He glanced away from her and moved uneasily, with 
that feeling of conscious guilt again bringing an unusual 
glow to his bronzed face. 

She was a grand-looking woman, this betrothed wife of 
his, but even while he sat there with her hands clasped in 
his, the dusky face of Electra Dean kept rising between 
them, and somehow, he could not have told why, it brought 
that guilty feeling over him. 

But never had Kate Vance found him so tender a lover 
as he was all that day. He did not seem willing to lose 
sight of her for an instant; for, as sure as she left his side, 
he began to make pictures again, with the beautiful 1 4 half 
savage,” as Miss Vance had called her, for his model. 

It was his last day at Silver Bend. In the morning he 
was going away, and when he came again it would be to 
claim his bride, and to start with her on the European tour 
they had planned to take. 

It was late when he bade her good-night and went up to 
his own room. 

But he did not retire. He seated himself by his window 
» instead, and gazed out on the slender crescent of the new 
I moon that crowned the March night. 

As he sat there, he was no longer the lover whispering 
tender things to the image of his betrothed as he had been 
doing all day, but he was the artist painting picture after 
picture of the same model-. 

And that model was Electra Dean. 

Suddenly he arose to his feet, and jerked down the cur- 
tain with an impatient gesture. 

“Confound the girl!” he muttered, angrily, “I believe 
she has bewitched me ! I can’t get rid of her.” 

He began immediately to prepare himself to retire, but 
even in his broken dreams he was making pictures of 
Electra Dean. . , , . 

The next morning he left Silver Bend, to return for his 
bride in three weeks. 


10 


ELECTRA. 


CHAPTER IV. 

A WILD FLOWER. 

It was late in the afternoon of the tenth of April. 

It was the evening appointed for the marriage of Ray 
Sylvane and Kate Vance. 

The young gentleman had arrived in the neighboring 
village early that morning, and had put up at the Red 
Star, the only hotel in the small town. 

He had taken dinner at Silver Bend in company with 
his betrothed, and her father — a widower whose only child 
she was. 

Never had lover been more tender than Ray Sylvane, and 
never had a betrothed bride been more sweetly kind than 
Kate Vance that day. 

At five o’clock they parted at the end of the avenue of 
pines. 

“ It is our last good-bye,” he said, bending to drop a kiss 
on her white forehead. “In four hours more you will be 
mine to keep and to hold till death do us part.” 

“Till death do us part,” she repeated; adding with 
strange earnestness, “ I would rather death should part us 
than anything else.” 

“Nothing else shall — nothing else can,” he said, lifting 
her hand to his bearded lips, and then vaulting into his 
saddle, and cantering away on a horse which a negro boy 
had been holding for him. 

He turned and waved her a good-bye with his hand, and 
neither of them dreamed that a longer time than four 
hours would pass before they should meet again. 

He turned the head of his horse toward the village, but 
as he entered the forest through which the road ran, a 
memory came to him of the red -cloaked figure he had en- 
countered on that very spot three weeks before. 

So vividly the dark, beautiful face, with its flashing , 
eyes, rose up before his mental vision, that it was as if her ‘ 
actual presence had appeared before him. 

He drew his rein, suddenly checking his horse in his i 
brisk canter, and then rode on slowly under the trees * 
through which the April sunshine dropped in golden frag- , 
ments upon him. 

The strange infatuation which had set him to making so 
many pictures of her three weeks ago, came over him I 
again. 

At a point in the road where a bridle-path entered it, he 
drew rein, and looked irresolutely along the shady way. 

Then, with a swift movement of his hand, he turned his ^ 
horse in that direction, and rode away through the narrow * 
avenue between the great trees. 


ELECTRA. 


11 


It terminated in a ravine, over the mossy stones of 
which he cantered until he came in sight of the little cabin 
of Granny Dean, where he had sought shelter from the 
storm three weeks before, and where he had watched with 
such curious interest the beautiful, graceful figure over 
which the firelight flickered. 

What the nature of that interest was, he had never tried 
to discover. 

He was a careless man of the world, leading that butter- 
fly sort of existence which caused him to grasp the pass- 
ing hour, and to gather all the honey he could out of it 
without questioning its quality, or seeking to analyze it. 

He had but followed that instinct when he turned into 
the bridle-path, and he followed it still when he halted at 
the door of Granny Dean’s cabin. 

The old woman was nodding in her chair, and Electra, 
wuth the scarlet strings of her broad hat tied under her 
chin, was standing in the middle of the room, wrapping 
some paper around a small vial. 

She looked up with a start as his shadow darkened the 
doorway, and hastily concealed the vial in her hand, 
while a dark, rich color stained her dusky face with a 
deeper glow, and her black eyes widened with surprise. 

“ How do you do, Miss Electra,” he said, holding out his 
hand, and speaking in a subdued tone, possibly out of con- 
sideration for the slumbers of her grandmother. 

The girl placed her small brown hand in the fairer, 
softer one he extended toward her, and invited him to 
enter, speaking in a confused way. 

“No, no,” he said, “it is bright and pleasant outside, 
and as I only called by for a minute in passing to inquire 
after— your grandmother, we will sit out here on the 
rocks and not disturb her by our voices, as I see she is 
asleep.” 

He had detained her hand in his, and had drawn her 
outside the cabin by a gentle pressure, and then he seated 
himself on one of the large, flat rocks with which the 
ravine abounded, and she dropped mechanically upon one 
near by. 

The surprise had died out of her eyes now, and in its 
stead had come a feverish glitter. 

“ Were you going out?” he asked, glancing at her hat. 

“Yes,” she answered, “ I was going to the village.” 

“I will only detain you for a few minutes,” he said in 
return, “but I could not help calling to thank you again 
for giving me shelter from the storm that night. Do you 
know that I feel that I owe my life to your kindness? I 
should most assuredly have been crushed by a falling tree 
but for the protection of your home.” 


n 


ELECTRA. 


“It was a poor shelter,” she said, drawing her black 
brows down over her eyes, “fora grand gentleman like 
you, but such as it was, I am sure you were welcome to 
it.” 

A tiny stream of crystal water ran along at his feet, and 
he stooped over and dipped up a few drops in the palm of 
his hand, with which he moistened his lips in a sort of un- 
conscious way. 

“I will bring a cup,” she said; and unheeding the quick 
objection he made, she arose and went into the house, and 
going to the little corner cupboard she took down a cup of 
coarse ware, and with her eyes glittering, she filled it with 
water from a bucket on the table, and then hastily drew 
the cork from the small vial she had been concealing in 
her hand and poured half of the colorless contents into it. 

“I had intended to have put this in his coffee to-night at 
the hotel if possible — now I will put it in the water,” she 
muttered. 

So saying, she replaced the stopper in the vial, and 
thrusting it into her bosom, she picked up the cup of drug- 
ged water, and went out with it to him where he was still 
sitting on the mossy rock. 

“You know we have a spring of mineral water near 
here, I expect; every one knows of it in the neighborhood, 
and this is some of it, I brought it fresh from the spring 
just before you came. Drink it, it will do you good.” 

He did know of the sulphur spring which had enjoyed 
local fame in his boyhood, so with a smile of thanks he 
took the cup from her hand, and quaffed the contents, 
keeping back a grimace at its unpalatableness, and setting 
the empty cup down beside him. 

She resumed her seat on the rock, picking nervously at 
the grass which sprung up in its crevices, while he com- 
mented on the beauty of the evening, all the time seeming 
to be content with viewing the beauty of her richly tinted 
face. 

In a very few minutes a thin silvery veil seemed to be 
drawn between him and her, and a delicious languor stole 
over him, through which his own voice as he talked, and 
hers as she replied, seemed to sound from afar off. 

Then the veil thickened and thickened between them 
until he could not see her any more. 

He rubbed his eyes drowsily, and made an effort to rise, 
with a dim consciousness over him that it was time for 
him 'to go; but, instead of rising to his feet, he fell pros- 
trate on his back on the mossy stones, with his senses 
locked in a deep sleep. 

Electra arose and knelt down beside him. 

“ You will hardly be married to-night, Miss Kate Vance,” 


ELECTRA. 


18 


she muttered throbbingly. “You may, perhaps, feel as 
deeply insulted as I did three weeks ago when you struck 
me with your whip!” 

She arose, and going to the tree to which he had tethered 
the horse, she loosened the rein, and led the animal into a 
dense copse, and hitched him where he could not be seen 
by any chance passer-by. 

The hours passed on, the night fell, and the stars arose 
over the man who was that night to have been a bride- 
groom, but who slumbered heavily on in utter unconscious- 
ness of the fact. 

And they arose also over Silver Bend, where the wedding 
guests assembled, and where the wedding feast grew cold 
on the table, and where the bride in her snowy robes 
waited for the bridegroom who did not come. 

And they arose over the little cottage of Granny Dean, 
where Electra sat until it was late in the night, crouching 
on the hearth, with the dying fire lapping out little tongues 
of flame here and there, and throwing fitful gleams on her 
flushed face and in her shining eyes. 

Her red lips were compressed, and her low forehead was 
knotted. 

There was a tumult at her brain and heart which had 
never been there before— and which was an entirely un- 
dreamed-of experience to her. 

She had grown up there in that little cabin with her 
grandmother, with no more care bestowed upon her train- 
ing, no more effort to turn the tendrils of her character in 
this or that direction, than was given to the wild vines 
and flowers whose vagrant beauty adorned the hillsides. 

She had no companions save her grandmother, and the 
birds, and the squirrels, and the flowers, nor did she desire 
any other. 

She had no education beyond the little knowledge of 
reading and writing which her dissolute father had taught 
her, and that which she learned from nature’s open pages. 

She had never had a lover, and she had grown up with- 
out any of those rosy dreams of love which come as nat- 
urally to young people as flowers come to the spring-time. 

But a sudden awakening had come to her ; and as she 
sat there late into the night with the flickering firelight 
playing over her, and with that novel tumult at her heart 
and brain, she fully realized the fact that the awakening 
had come, and that she was madly in love with high-born 
Ray Sylvane. 

“I would a thousand times rather see him dead than 
married to any one !” she muttered fiercely through her lit- 
tle white teeth, involuntarily clinching her fists. “And 
he never shall marry any one if I can prevent it even at 


14 


ELECTEA. 


the risk of my life! I prevented it this time, and I would 
find means to prevent it again !” 

The strength of her unbridled nature showed itself in 
her face, which was flushed and drawn, and also in the 
way she clinched her fingers until the nails cut into her 
palms. 

The idea that Ray Sylvane would come to reciprocate 
her love never for an instant crossed her mind; she too 
thoroughly understood the wide distance, in every respect, 
that separated them, to indulge, even for an instant, in 
such a hope. 

She felt that she was powerless to touch his heart ; but 
in the matter of throwing obstructions between him and 
any other woman, she felt that she was strong. 

“ While I live he shall never marry anyone else!” she 
muttered. “I swear it before all the saints and angels!” 

She reached out and took the wooden poker from the 
corner near, and traced a cross with it in the glowing 
ashes, perhaps intending to substitute that sign for the kiss 
on the Bible which usually seals an oath. 


CHAPTER V. 

AN AWAKENING. 

All night long the stars looked down on Ray Sylvane, 
and the dew fell upon him as he lay there on the mossy 
stones, with his face upturned, wrapped in the heavy, 
dreamless sleep which the subtle drug had brought to 
him. 

He awoke with the cold, gray dawn fanning him — 
awoke to a dull recognition of himself, and to a sharp 
sense of the rheumatic twinges that racked his limbs. 

Where was he? 

He raised himself stiffly and painfully to a sitting post- 
ure, and stared dazedly around. 

Above him was the leaden sky ; before him were the tall 
hills with the fog lifting from the ravine between them ; 
beneath him were the mossy stones ; and behind him was 
the moldy cottage of Granny Dean. 

His hat had fallen from his head, and was lying crushed 
by his own shoulder at a little distance from him, and he 
raised his arm and ran his fingers in a bewildered way 
through his damp hair. 

How came he there? 

The question came dully into his throbbing head, as he 
stared around him. 

The birds were awaking, and here and there a note from 
their tuneful throats broke through the foggy atmosphere ; 
but he heard them as one hears sounds when in a state of 


ELECTRA. 15 

semi-consciousness, and still he stared dazedly, and still 
the dull question came into his benumle 1 mind: 

“ What does it mean?” 

Suddenly remembrance came to him. 

It was brought by the low whinny of his horse in the 
clump of trees where Electra had concealed him. 

As if the familiar sound were fraught with magic power 
a flood of light broke into his mind. Memory came back 
to him link by link, until the entire chain of events of the 
evening before and their possible consequences were before 
him. 

The dawn should have found him the husband of Kate 
Vance ! 

Great drops broke out on his face, and trickled in 
streams over it, as the realization of the effect his non-ap- 
pearance would have on the woman who waited vainly for 
him in her bridal robes rushed over him. 

“ My God, what must she think of me!” he exclaimed, 
hoarsely, springing to his feet, without noticing the sharp 
pains the damp chill night had brought to his limbs. 

He strode to the door of the cabin and knocked loudly 
on it with his knuckles. 

From the thin column of smoke rising out of the dingy 
chimney, he knew that one at least of the two occupants 
of the domicile was astir, and by the lightness of the step 
that crossed the bare floor in answer to his summons, he 
knew it was the girl. 

The bolt was drawn back, the door was swung open, and, 
in her dark, picturesque beauty, Electra appeared before 
him. 

She saw that his face was flushed, and that his eyes were 
glittering with anger, and her red lips parted in a smile, 
showing the rows of pearly teeth between them. 

Ray Sylvane grasped her round arm firmly, and drew 
her outside the house. 

‘ ‘ I want to talk to you where we will not be inter- 
rupted,” he said, sternly. Then looking down into the 
brilliant black eyes which she uplifted fearlessly to his as 
she stood before him on the mossy rocks, he asked : 

“What, in the name of Satan, ever induced you to play 
such a trick on me?” 

“What trick?” she asked, with sly dimples in her 
cheeks, which glowed with the mellow wine color of an 
autumn sunset. 

“Why do you ask that?” he responded, with angry 
impatience. “ You know as well as I C \ that I am here 
this morning because of the drugged water you gave me to 
drink yesterday evening.” 

“Drugged water!” She shrugged her shoulders, and 


16 


ELECTRA. 


laughed as she uttered the words."' “ What do 1 know about 
drugs? Wliat do I know about anything except hard 
work and poverty?” 

He made an impatient movement, and his hand, the 
muscles of which were as firm as fine steel, closed more 
tightly around her wrist. 

“ Itis as little use for you to deny that the cup of water 
you gave me had in it some powerful drug to produce 
sleep, as it would be for you to acknowledge it, because it 
could make no difference now; and what I demand to 
know is, what induced you to do it. Answer me that! 
Have you any idea of the terrible mischief you did by it? 
Do you know that last night was to have been my wed- 
ding-night?” 

For the first time since he had been looking into it there 
in the gray dawn, he saw the gypsy-like face contract and 
flush with passion. 

“ Every one for miles and miles around, knew that Miss 
Vance expected to be married last night; and you may be 
sure that I didn’t forget it, because she gave me a keep- 
sake on my shoulder with her riding whip, and I sha’n’t 
forget her — no — I sha’n’t forget her !” 

She vibrated from head to foot with passion which she 
seemed to be striving to hold in restraint, for she shut her 
small teeth together in a way that suggested to him, as he 
noticed it, the locked doors of a prison. 

A flood of light came into his understanding. 

He comprehended the bitter malice, the thirst for re- 
venge in her untamed nature, which had controlled her 
when she gave him the narcotic. 

“ You beautiful devil!” he exclaimed, flinging her arm 
from his band, in order to strike her, “ you have sacrificed 
me — me, whose feelings toward you were something more 
than kind !” 

He turned and left her, and going to the thicket from 
whence the low, complaining whinny of the horse had been 
coming at intervals, he unhitched the bridle, and mount- 
ing into the saddle he rode away to the village, with a feel- 
ing of shame oyer him that made him shrink even from 
the sight of birds as he passed along, with a miserable 
idea that they, soulless things though they were, must 
hold him in contempt. 

How then could he meet the accusing glance of his fellow- 
men, the very meanest of whom he felt would not, for the 
salvation of life itself, stand in the light in which he must 
appear. 

And how could he explain his conduct? How could he 
cleanse it of the appearance of pitiful meanness that cov- 
ered it as if it were nauseous slime? 


ELECTRA. 17 

He could not tell the sensational story that he had been 
drugged into forgetfulness by Electra Dean. 

No one would believe the assertion, and he shrank from 
making it with a sensitive consciousness of the ridicule it 
would bring on him. 

These harassing thoughts occupied his mind as he rode 
to the village, and they only deepened his misery. 

He went to the Red Star hotel, shrinking from the curi- 
ous eyes of every one he met ; and being keenly sensible to 
^every indication, he noticed that not a hat was lifted to 
him, although he passed three old gentlemen who had been 
friends of his father, and had petted him in his boyhood. 

The hostler to whom he threw his bridle, as well as the 
usually obsequious proprietor of the house, looked at him 
with contemptuous curiosity, but nothing more. 

“ I have fallen so in the scale of esteem that I can hardly 
go down any further,” he muttered, as he made his way to 
his room. 

There he took from his trunk a sheet of paper, all four 
sides of which he covered in protestations to Miss Vance 
that his non-appearance the evening before had been un- 
avoidable. It was interspersed with .expressions of pro- 
found regret that he could not explain the cause of his de- 
tention, but implored her to trust him, to shelter him still 
in her love, and to let the marriage between them take 
place that evening as it had been set to do the evening be- 
fore. 

It was an incoherent document which he hurriedly scrib- 
bled off, and which he hired a small boy to take to Silver 
Bend, and to bring back the answer. 

Then he shut himself up in his room and waited, feeling 
that his very life hung upon the issue of that appeal. For, 
now that she seemed to be snatched from him, he felt that 
Kate Vance was the queen among woman; the pearl be- 
yond price. 

CHAPTER VI. ‘ 

A GATHERING STORM. 

The interest which Electra Dean had awakened in Ray 
Sylvane was due wholly to the artistic element in his 
nature. 

She was beautiful; she was picturesque; she was rare. 
Therefore, she attracted and captivated his fancy, but she 
did not touch his heart, as a dim suspicion began to 
dawn upon him that she had — a vague hint Avhispered to 
his own soul that had brought a feeling of guilt over him. 

But as he walked restlessly about his room, waiting, 
with his heart beating with overpowering tumultuousness, 


18 


ELECTRA. 


for an answer to his appeal, he knew that he had been 
mistaken in the suspicion. 

He knew that more to him than anything else on earth 
— more even than life itself, notwithstanding her faults of 
pride and temper, was Kate Vance, with her regal pres- 
ence and her handsome refined face. 

What would she think when she read his letter? Would 
she forgive him, and take him back to her trust and love 
again? 

Would she consent for the marriage to take place that 
evening? 

Over and over again he kept asking himself these ques- 
tions, while the anxious minutes trailed slowly by to the 
stormy march which his heart was beating. 

Would the messenger never return? 

Scarcely an hour had passed since he left, yet to Ray 
Sylvane it seemed that many had intervened since he put 
the note into his hand. 

Perhaps he was detained to wait for the answer she was 
writing. 

Of course she would write an answer, hut what would it 
he? 

He began to speculate as to the words with which she 
would express her forgiveness — for his intense desire for 
forgiveness had brought the belief that he would receive 
it — and he had framed several very tender letters to him- 
self by the time the messenger returned. 

“Give me the letter!” he cried, as the boy, who belonged 
to the order of street waifs, appeared. 

In buffeting with the world the young ragamuffin had 
grown pre ter naturally shrewd and suspicious, so when the 
gentleman held out his hand for the letter he was sure the 
boy had brought, that shrewd individual, instead of giving 
it to him, drew back with his hands in his pockets and said 
with a wag of his unkempt head : 

“ Lemme me see the color of yer money fust.” 

Ray Sylvane thrust his hand into his vest pocket and 
drew out a silver coin. 

“There, take that and give me the letter,” he said im- 
patiently . 

Whereupon the boy took off his ragged hat and took an 
envelope from the crown which, holding gingerly between 
his dirty fingers, he extended to Ray. 

The young gentleman snatched it from him; glanced 
eagerly at the superscription, and then let it fall to the 
floor at his feet. 

“ What do you mean, rascal?” he cried out, grasping the 
boy by the shoulder and shaking him until his teeth chat- 
tered. “ What do you mean, you young scoundrel, by 


ELECTRA. 19 

bringing my own letter back to me? Where is the one the 
lady sent?” 

The boy gasped and choked, and then blubbered out, dig- 
ging his knuckles into his eyes: 

“ That's the letter wot the old man giv’ me to bring you, 
I never seen the young leddy; she be sick abed, the old 
man said.” 

Ray Sylvane released the ragamuffin’s shoulder and 
sank down on a chair, feeling as if there were a lump in 
his throat that half suffocated him, while the boy took the 
opportunity to slip out, proudly jingling the silver coin 
against a brass button in his pocket. 

Ray Sylvane, staring stupidly down at his returned let- 
ter, every word of which he had written as if the pen had 
been dipped in his heart’s blood, noticed some penciled 
lines on the envelope, which he hastily proceeded to read. 

They were not written by Kate, but were in the charac- 
ters made by the tremulous hand of her old father, and 
were few and to the point : 

“ Sir,— A t my daughter’s request I return this letter 
to you. At her request, also, I abstain from horsewhipping 
you. - Richard Vance.” 

JMie envelope had been opened. He took the letter from 
Ad his eyes caught sight of some delicately traced 
words on the margin above the heading. 

His heart throbbed as if it would beat its way out of his 
bosom as he recognized that writing. 

It was Kate’s, and he read the words with an eagerness 
with which he had never read anything before; and they 
filled him with a hopelessness that nothing else had ever 
done. 

There were only eight words, and they were: 

“ Never let me look upon your face again.” 

^ The paper fell from Ray Sylvane’s hands, and his head 
drooped over on his breast. 

I “Henceforth I have nothing to live for,” he muttered, 
huskily, “ she was my all in all.” 

And the first tears that had dimmed his eyes since he 
had stood over his mother’s grave, now almost a score of 
years ago, welled into them. 

They dropped over another grave— the grave of a great 
hope. 

“For this, I have to thank Electra Dean!” he whispered, 
after a minute. “In order that her enemy might be 
tainted, she poisoned her friend. It was a mad, cruel 
thing— a tiling hard to forgive.” 

It was easy to make impressions on his peculiarly sensi- 
tive nature, and those impressions were hard to efface; 


20 


ELECTEA. 


and sitting among the ruins of his hopes, in the shadow of 
the desolation which she had brought upon him a feeling 
of bitter resentment arose within him against Electra 
Dean. 

Not only had his happiness been destroyed, but his honor 
had been "blackened in the eyes of the world— an indelible 
stain had been thrown upon his fair name. 

And he could not forgive the wrong. 

He told himself that over and over again as he sat there 
in his room brooding forlornly; and he told himself so 
again as be sat in the cars that were bearing him away an 
hour afterward from the place to which he had gone with 
such high hope, and which he left with such bitter de- 
spair. 

“ I can never forgive her, and in the time to come she 
may find it out,” he muttered, gazing out of the narrow 
window of the car at the sky, over which a storm was 
gathering. 


CHAPTER VII. 

AN ARROW IN THE HEART. 

The extent of the pain and mortification which Kate 
Vance experienced in the humiliating disappointment 
touching her proposed marriage, was known only to her- 
self. 

Although it gnawed her heart, and drew the bloom from 
her cheeks, and the light from her eyes, she kept its pres- 
ence hidden under the mask of indifference which her 
towering pride furnished. 

She knew that her disappointment was a delicious mor- 
sel in the mouths of those who had envied her for her 
wealth and beauty, and who had hated her for her haugh- 
tiness, and that knowledge was to her like the bitterness 
of death. Yet she concealed it under an appearance of the 
calmest indifference. 

Even on that terrible evening of the tenth of April, when 
she had waited in her bridal attire for the bridegroom 
who did not come, she had maintained her composure. 

She had even gone down into the parlors and mingled 
with her guests, and had also presided at the wedding 
feast which made such a mocking display on the glittering 
table, with her usual queenly grace, albeit it was with a 
face as colorless as marble, and with eyes that glittered 
feverishly. 

Yet no one who looked upon her could go away saying 
that the blow had crushed her. They could only wonder 
at her fortitude and her seeming indifference. 

Only the stars that looked in through her window when 


ELECTRA. 


21 


the lights had been extinguished and the tables cleared, 
could have borne witness to the anguish that rended her soul 
as she lay all night long prostrate on the floor of her room, 
with her cold hands clasped over her heart, and with her 
face as white and rigid as that of a corpse. Only the stars 
could have told that, but the secret was safe in their 
eternal silence. 

So the gray dawn had crept upon her. But an hour 
afterward, when she entered her father’s presence, to re- 
quest of him that he would make no effort to avenge the 
deep insult, she was as passionless as marble. 

“ The least that is said about it the sooner it will be for- 
gotten,” she declared. “ So I wish you to treat Ray Syl- 
vane as I shall do, with silent contempt. I wish the whole 
affair to be buried, and no attempted vengeance on your 
part or mine, to raise a monument over it to perpetuate its 
memory. 

Her father had yielded to her entreaties, and, save for 
those few bitter lines traced on the letter he had written 
to her, no notice was taken of Ray Sylvane. 

After that she had retired to her room again, and had 
remained there all day, prostrated by a headache, the pain 
of which was only surpassed by that which gnawed her 
heart. But it was the first and the last sign of any effect 
the humiliation had upon her, so far as the inmates of her 
own home, even, knew. 

She rode and drove and visited as before, and the name 
, of Ray Sylvane never passed her lips, and, of course, no 
one mentioned it to her; the most daring and malicious 
of her acquaintances never ventured to do so. 

Did she love Ray Sylvane still? 

If she had put the question to herself, she would have 
answered that she hated him with a burning hatred. But 
she never did put the question to herself ; the mere suspi- 
cion seemed utterly preposterous. For how could she enter 
tain any passion but hatred toward one who had so want- 
only humiliated her. 

That any insurmountable obstacle had arisen to prevent 
his fulfillment of the marriage contract, never for an in- 
stant found lodgment in her mind. She believed he had, 
for some reason, what she did not know, repented of the 
bargain, and had at the last moment backed out of it. 

Whatever motive actuated him, no hint of it reached her 
save a suggestion contained in an ill-spelled, badly written 
anonymous communication that came to her through the 
post a few days after the disappointment, written by the 
spiteful hand of Electra Dean. 

That communication was to the effect that Ray Sylvane 


22 


ELECTRA. 


had spent the evening appointed for his marriage m com- 
pany with another woman. 

Miss Yance had read the lines with her face growing 
gray and set, and had crumpled it in her hand, and then 
applied a lighted match to it, and so had burned it. 

But as the days glided on into weeks Silver Bend grew 
more and more intolerable to her, and early in May she 
announced to her father her wish to be taken to the sea- 
shore, and the old gentleman, who had no will superior'to 
hers, readily agreed, and to the sea-shore they according- 
ly went. 

They selected a quiet fishing village as their abiding: 
place for the remainder of the spring and the summer, and 
hired a pretty, comfortable cottage on the coast. 

“ Ah,” Miss Yance said to herself, drawing a long breath 
as she stood alone on the sandy beach the day of her arrival, 
glancing across the broad water that reflected the sun- 
set hues like a great palette. “ For the first time since the 
tenth of April I feel that I can breathe freely. Here there 
is nothing to remind me of him; here these is no fear that 
I shall at some unexpected moment look upon his treach- 
erous face !” 

It was an attractive place, that pretty, picturesque vil- 
lage, especially to world-weary people who found its quiet 
a refreshing change to the feverish unrest of busy life, and 
not a few sought it in the summer months. But as it was 
so early in the season there were comparatively few guests 
at the modest hotels and cottages; so Miss Vance enjoyed 
the ocean view in the solitude she coveted that evening, 
for she was entirely alone on the beach against which the 
waves washed dreamily. 

Far away in the distance, with the sunset gleaming over 
it, she saw the white sail of an on-coming ship. 

It added to the peacefulness of the scene, tor it looked 
like a snowy bird gliding slowly over the burnished waters ; 
and she watched it with a delicious calm stealing over her 
which she had not enjoyed for many a day before. 

The sunset glory died away, and the twilight crept like a 
silvery cloud where it had been ; and the sailing ship came 
steadily on, nearer and nearer. 

“She is heading for the village,” Miss Yance said, point- 
ing to the ship, and speaking to her father, who had saun- 
tered down to the beach to keep her company. 

“Vessels touch here frequently,” the old gentleman said, 
“to put off passengers and freight.” 

“I wonder who the passengers will be that this one 
brings,” Kate responded a look of discontent coming into 
her face. ‘ ‘ I wish no one would come here this summer. ” 

“ I wish so too,” her father replied, stroking his long, 


ELECTRA. 


23 


silvery beard, “ but’we can hardly hope to escape compan- 
ionship, for the world is full of restless people, and we are 
apt to jostle against them, even if we should go to the ice 
vales of Siberia.” 

Then he began to point out the features of the darkening 
landscape which seemed to him the most pleasing, and as 
he was fond of hearing his own eloquence, his daughter al- 
lowed him to enlarge uninterruptedly on the beauties 
which he discovered. 

The round moon rose over the ocean, softly lighting the 
ship that came silently and gracefully on like a conscious 
thing. 

A hundred yards above the spot where Colonel Vance 
and his daughter were standing and watching it, it cast 
anchor. 

A small boat left its side and was rowed to the shore. 

In that boat were two passengers, and as they stepped 
from it to the land, the outlines of their forms were clear- 
ly revealed to the eyes of Miss Vance in the pure moon- 
light, although they were a hundred yards distant. 

She pressed her hand over her heart and uttered a low 
cry, which blended with the moan of the waves washing 
on the shore. 

In the larger of these two forms she had recognized the 
person of Ray Sylvane. 

With the sharp pain that struck like an arrow into her 
heart there blended a bitter sense of humiliation. 

She seemed to be choking, and she raised her head and 
wrenched the pale blue ribbon from her throat, in order to 
breathe more freely. 

‘ ‘ I believe I should rejoice if I should see him struck 
dead !” she muttered, turning without a word of explana- 
tion to her father, and hastening to the cottage. 


.1 

CHAPTER VIII. 

1 WHISPER OF THE WAVES. 

On leaving the beach, Miss Vance went immediately to 
her own room. x 

“ When father comes in, tell him that I have a headache, 
and don’t wish to be disturbed,” she said, curtly, to her 
maid, as she dismissed her from further attendance on her 
for the night. 

She had said that she meant to retire immediately, but 
she did not do so. She placed herself instead on a low 
chair at the window, and gazed out upon the broad sweep 
of water above which the round moon drifted like a silver 


24 


ELECTRA. 


Her eyes and cheeks were glowing as if with the fire of 
fever, and her heart was beating tumultuously. 

Never for an instant did her thoughts leave Ray Sylvane, 
and never for an instant did the terrible feeling of bitter- 
ness she entertained toward him diminish. 

“Oh, that she could make him understand how little he 
was to her— how less than nothing, save for the contempt 
and hatred she had for him,” her thoughts ran. “ Oh, that 
she could make him understand how easily she could cast 
him out of her life !” 

A burning desire to make him understand that fact took 
possession of her ; a desire to show him that he had the 
power to disturb her life as little as a pebble cast into the 
ocean would move that great flood. 

“ That’s what I’ll do !” she exclaimed to herself at last, 
bringing her delicate hand down on the window-sill with 
a blow so fierce that it cruelly bruised the tender flesh. “I 
will marry some one else— the first eligible person who 
may ask me! Then Mr. Ray Sylvane will understand that 
I am not hard to console for the loss of himself!” 

It was late into the night when she came to that conclu- 
sion, and the moon had gone down, leaving only the un- 
silvered darkness to envelop her; for she had not lighted 
her lamp. 

So she arose, and threw herself, ready dressed as she 
was, upon her bed, but she did not sleep. 

All night long, while the low winds moaned against her 
window, and the sullen waves moaned against the shore, 
she tossed restlessly, feeling a feverish exultation in the 
idea which had fastened upon her mind to show Ray Syl- 
vane how easily she had cast him from her heart by an 
early marriage with some one else. 

“ He shall not think that 1 am grieving myself to death 
for him,” she muttered over and over again; and it seemed 
such an easy thing to give her hand to some one else. 

Who that some one else was to be, she never thought to 
inquire of herself ; but she did not think with favor of any 
lover who had preceded Ray Sylvane as a claimant for her 
hand, there being none among the number whom she had 
looked upon with favor ; so her ideas drifted in a vague 
way about some one whom she was yet to meet. 

It seemed very much pleasanter to think of marrying 
some one whom she had never seen than any one whom 
she had known ; for, of course, she could, in her mind, in- 
vest him with all necessary charms, and could not remem- 
ber any jarring lack of congeniality, as she could with those 
who had been her suitors. 

So, filled with feverish unrest, she tossed all night long 
with the mournful lullaby of the wind and sea in her ears! 


ELECTRA. 95 

and when the dawn, cold and gray, came stealing into her 
room, she arose, with her face utterly colorless, and with 
her eyes heavy from the pain that was racking her head. 

She bathed her throbbing temples, and combed out her 
long brown hair, and then she threw a light shawl over 
her shoulders, and tied a broad-brimmed hat over her flow- 
ing hair, which she left unbound because of the pain in her 
head. 

“ I will go out for a walk, and see the sun rise from the 
summit of Eagle’s Crag: the air will refresh me,” she mut- 
tered, as she turned and went from the room, gliding softly 
along the little hall, and passing noiselessly through the 
front door. 

Eagle’s Crag towered up tall and rugged a quarter of a 
mile in the distance, with the restless waves fretting at its 
base, and the fog curling in misty wreaths around it. 

As Miss Vance walked hurriedly on, the cold, damp air 
blew refreshingly in her face, moistening her throbbing 
brow with minute particles of the salt spray, which was 
very pleasant to her in her feverish state, and which light- 
ened the heavy pressure on her heart and brain. 

The exhilarating ocean breeze caused a complete reac- 
tion to come to her, a feeling of buoyancy took possession 
of her. It seemed to her such an easy matter now to be- 
come the mistress of the situation over Ray Sylvane. 

As she walked swiftly and lightly along, it seemed to be 
such a very easy matter to love and to marry some other 
suitor, and so convince him how very independent she was 
of him. 

On she went, with the yellow sand grating pleasantly 
under her feet, and with the breeze blowing refreshingly 
on her face ; and with the murmur of the Avaters coming 
musically to her ears. 

She reached Eagle’s Crag in a very short time, and began 
to ascend it, climbing nimbly from rock to rock that jutted 
out of its rugged side. 

It was a long way up, and by the time she had reached 
the summit her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were 
flushed with the exertion. 

But how beautiful the scene was, and how well it repaid 
for the exertion it had cost her to see it, she thought, as 
she sank down to rest on the brow of the promontory, and 
ran her eyes over the far reaches of the landscape. 

There was a flush as of wine where the line of sea and 
sky met in the east— the advance glory of the rising sun, 
which, blending with the shades or the mellowing dawn, 
was exceedingly beautiful. 

From the base of the rocky crag she heard the whisper 
of the waves, but she could not see them, and in order to 


26 


ELECTRA. 


do so, she rose to her feet and went to the edge of the 
great, projecting rock on which she had been sitting, and 
leaned over in a very dangerous way. 

She had not noticed the sound of footsteps approaching 
lightly and rapidly behind her, and she was wholly un- 
conscious of any one’s proximity until a firm grasp.was 
placed on her arm, and she was drawn forcibly back from 
the brow of the precipice over which she had been lean- 
ing, while at the same time a voice which had a strong 
German accent, exclaimed : 

“ You stand too near de brink; you will fall over.” 

Smothering the startled cry which had arisen to her 
lips, she glanced around to see a tall, slender man with a 
heavy mustache and greenish eyes, who was frowning and 
grimacing in a manner indicative of strong displeasure at 
her daring. 

“ Thank you,” she said, catching her breath and releas- 
ing her arm from his grasp ; 4 1 but I was in no danger ; I 
am very sure-footed.” And then she asked, staring curi- 
ously into his face : 

“ Where did you come from ? I didn’t know that any 
one was near me.” 

He shrugged his shoulders and knotted his forehead. 

“ It was a good thing for you dat I was near you, or you 
might be down there. ” 

He made a quick motion with his hand so as to indicate 
the sea below, and then he added : 

“I come up from de village to see de sun rise. It is a 
grand sight, de sunrise over de ocean. I have many a 
time watched it come up over de Rhine from de windows 
of my father’s c'astle in Germany.” 

“ How long have you been in America?” Miss Vance in- 
quired, for lack of something more interesting to say. 

“ It is now six months since I landed in New York, and 
I have travel, travel ever since, seeing de beauties of de 
country,” he responded, his greenish eyes never for an in- 
stant leaving her face. 

“ It is a beautiful country indeed, don’t you think so?” 
she said, and he responded with another knitting of his 
brows and another shrug of his shoulders. 

“Oh, de country is well enough to look at — but de peo- 
ple ” — an expressive grimace ended the sentence, and Miss 
Vance, catching its unflattering import, said, in a tone of 
pique : 

“ What objection do you find to the people? Surely they 
are good and hospitable.” 

“ Oh, yes,” he answered, always accompanyingiiis words 
with shrugs and frowns. “ Dey are good people in deir way, 
but deir way is not like our way. Dey have not de re- 


ELECTRA. 


27 


spect in deir manners. Dey say to me, * Mr. Von Hirsch- 
berg.’ In Germany I am call Count Von Hirschberg. I 
am treated with respect in honor of my rank. Here dey 
have no rank, dey have no respect .for rank. I lon’t like 
dat!” 

He emphasized his disapproval with a great many shakes 
of his hemp-colored head, and with a great many contor- 
tions of his sharp features. 

Miss Vance was young, and she was also filled with a 
great deal of false pride. In common with many youth- 
ful Americans, she had a profound respect for high-sound- 
ing titles, and the man announcing himself as the Count 
Von Hirschberg did not appear to her as a vain boaster, 
but as a person to be venerated almost because of his 
rank. 

There came to her a humiliating sense that she was in- 
finitely his inferior in social position, and a sort of disdain 
for herself and her country with its arbitrary rules of so- 
cial and political equality rose up within her, and she felt 
that he, the high-born foreigner, must share in her feelings. 

Her beauty seemed to her to be the only thing worth 
prizing in all her possessions, and she saw that he appre- 
ciated that, for his unabashed eyes as they rested upon her 
declared it. 

He was not married : in his voluble communicativeness 
about himself, he soon told her that, and also that he was 
the only child of his titled father, who lived in a grand 
castle overlooking the Rhine. 

While she stood there talking with him, and hearing the 
song of the sea, an idea that brought a conscious flush to 
her cheeks drifted through her mind. If that idea had 
been clothed in words, it would have been: 

“ Suppose he should fall in love with me, and offer to 
make me the Countess Von Hirschberg, and I should ac- 
cept him, what would Ray Sylvane think, I wonder ?” 

The mere suggestion brought a thrill to her heart to 
think how chagrined he would be to find that the woman 
he had rejected instead of breaking her heart about him, 
had formed an alliance infinitely better. 

The sun arose as if it were a ball of fire floating up from 
the sea, and it was an hour old in the new day when Miss 
Vance suddenly remembered that it was high time for her 
to turn her steps homeward. 

“ I must go,” she said ; “ by the time I reach the cottage, 
breakfast will be ready, and father will be uneasy if he 
misses me. ” 

“I will go with you, and take care of you — you have 
beauty which makes me your slave,” the Count said, turn- 


28 ELEOTRA. 

ing also, and accompanying her down the rocky side of 
the headland. 


CHAPTER IX. 

SHADOWS. 

It was sunset. 

All the western line of sea and sky was aglow with 
lingering tracks of crimson and gold, and the air was mel- 
low with the influence of the coming twilight. 

On the long veranda of the principal hotel of the village 
were two men. One of them was Gabriel McGregor, the 
proprietor of the house, a large man, leaning back against 
the wall in a strong chair, with his mind deeply buried in 
the contents of a huge volume of “ Josephus,” which he 
was holding on his broad chest as he read it. 

The other person was also a large man, but he was 
much younger, and he had a restless look which was in 
striking contrast to the absorbed face of the naturally 
phlegmatic McGregor. He was walking up and down the 
length of the long veranda. 

Every now and then his brown eyes swept a glance over 
the broad ocean, whose waters lapped the beach less than 
fifty yards away. Far away the sails of ships dotted the 
blue iike the wings of white birds tinged with the gold of 
the sunset. 

The young gentleman was Ray Sylvane, and he held in 
his right hand a small telescope, elegantly mounted in 
ebony and gold, but he had not once lifted it to his ewe in 
the ten minutes during which he had been pacing up and 
down on the veranda. 

Now, however, as he glanced seaward, something at- 
tracted his attention— something that appeared like a 
swimming bird in the distance, and he halted in his walk 
and raised the glass to his eye. 

The strongly magnifying instrument revealed to him 
that the object was not a large bird, but was instead a 
small pleasure-boat in which two persons were seated — a 
man, who was rowing, and a woman who was steering. 

He could only discern that much and no more, but some- 
how, the sight awakened an inexplicable interest in him, 
and he spoke to McGregor, near whom he had halted, and 
asked : 

“ Are those two in the boat yonder a pair of your vil- 
lagers? I have noticed the same little craft for several 
evenings.” 

The absorbed host, not hearing his question, continued to 
read on, and he repeated it, and even called his name im- 
patiently before he attracted his attention; and when he 


ELECTRA. 


29 


liad succeeded in causing the reader to turn his spectacled 
eyes from the page of the book to his face, he was com- 
pelled to reiterate the question before the abstracted 
McGregor took in his meaning. 

Then he slowly reached out his pudgy hand for the tele- 
scope, and by dint of great care fitted his eye to the wrong 
end, and was some time in finding out the mistake, but 
at last succeeded in righting it ; and then, after staring 
through it for fully five minutes, he restored it to the 
young man, and after emptying his mouth of a quantity 
of tobacco juice, he said, in his deep gutturals: 

“ I think they are Von Hirschberg, and a young lady 
who has taken a cottage near the headlands.” 

“ Who is the young lady?” Ray Sylvane asked, feeling a 
growing interest in the matter which he could not have 
accounted for. 

“I don’t know her name,” Mr. McGregor responded, 
evincing a determination to return immediately to his 
book. “ I’m not acquainted with them.” 

Not acquainted with whom?” Ray asked impatiently; 
and Mr. McGregor, whose spectacles had already been 
turned toward the inviting page, grunted out abstractedly : 

“ The old man and her — her father, I reckon.” 

Ray Sylvane shrugged his shoulders, and resumed his 
walk. 

He saw that it would be only a waste of time and pa- 
tience to question his host any further, so he contenced 
himself with staring at the little boat through the telescope, 
and with vague speculations in regard to its occupants. 

Her father and her. The relationship suggested by the 
landlord brought forcibly to his mind the thought of Colo- 
nel Vance and his daughter, and a startling idea broke 
over him. 

What if they were the occupants of the cottage near the 
headlands ? They were somewhere on the sea-shore, he 
knew, but where, he did not know. 

His heart began to beat tumultuously, as he walked up 
and down the veranda, staring at the little boat swimming 
like a bird on the shining sea in the distance. 

Could it be that the parties in it were Kate Vance, proud, 
refined Kate Vance, and the bombastic foreigner who had 
occupied a seat at the same table with himself for the last 
week ? 

He could hardly recognize her association with such a 
man as being in the very slightest degree in accordance 
with his knowledge of her character. 

“ Von Hirschberg is ill-bred,” he muttered, “she could 
not tolerate his society for five consecutive minutes.” 

The far-reaching glass was at his eye, and he noticed 


30 


ELECTRA. 


that the little boat he was watching was now returning. It 
was rapidly skimming the water, growing every moment 
darker in the darkening twilight, and it was heading for 
the neighborhood of Eagle’s Crag. 

A sudden idea seized on the mind of Ray Sylvane, and 
he hastened to put it in execution. 

He would saunter down the beach ; he would be near 
enough to the boat when it landed to see who its occupants 
really were He would set his mind at rest in regard to 
Kate Vance. 

He stepped off the veranda and walked swiftly away 
over the brown sands in the gathering gloom, always keep- 
ing his eyes fixed on the shadowy-looking boat now draw- 
ing rapidly toward the shore. 

He observed the point for which it was making, and he 
halted about twenty -five yards away, and waited for it to 
touch the land. 

“ If it is Kate— which I can’t believe is possible — I will 
recognize her from this distance.” 

On came the little boat, nearer and nearer. 

His heart began to throb, and his breath to come 
rapidly. 

That graceful figure holding the rudder smote him with 
its familiar look. 

The white prow touched the sand of the beach, and the 
figure arose and stepped lightly out, unassisted by the 
oarsman. 

Ray Sylvane uttered a quick exclamation. 

Surely nature had never gifted but one woman with that 
queenly grace! Surely, surely, it was Kate Vance. 

He knew it even before her face was turned toward him 
in the dim light, as she bade adieu to her companion, who 
immediately struck the oars into the water, and went 
skimming away again. 

Kate Vance did not linger on the beach.: she turned 
away towards the little cottage, but before she reached it, 
Ray Sylvane’s rapid steps had brought him up beside her, 
and as she turned toward him with a startled cry, every 
particle of color going out of her face, he said entreatingly, 
reaching out his hand and placing it on her arm: 

“ Kate, my darling, let me speak to you for at least five 
minutes.” 


CHAPTER X. 

A REPULSE. 

The sudden appearance of her former lover there before 
her in the deepening dusk, was so unexpected to Miss 


ELECTRA. 31 

Vance that she only stared wide-eyed for an instant after 
he had said : 

“Let me speak to you for at least five minutes.” 

Then a dark flush swept over her face, and she began to 
tremble. 

She dragged her arm from his detaining hand, and said 
hoarsely : 

“How dare you approach me, Ray Sylvane! Never 
presume to speak to me again I Ah, I could kill you, but 
that I have so much contempt for you !” 

Quivering from head to foot with the storm of feeling 
that had been stirred within her by the sight of him, she 
turned to walk on to the cottage. 

But he was not so easily shaken off. He walked on be- 
side her, and persisted in speaking oo her, for it seemed 
to him that he would die there in her regal presence unless 
he could disburden his heart by offering a truthful expla- 
nation of the cause, so far as he knew it, which had pre- 
vented his presence at that wedding feast. 

“Hear me, Kate,” he said, pleadingly. “You must 
hear me ! I swear that my detention that evening was 
wholly unavoidable. Let me explain.” 

She swung suddenly around and halted before him, 
with her eyes flashing and her cheeks glowing. 

“ Can you explain the motive that prompted you to spend 
the hours of that evening, which was to have seen you 
married to me, in the society of another woman?” 

For the first time in her life, an allusion to that humili- 
ating fact had crossed the lips of Kate Vance. Yet, not a 
waking hour of her time had passed that she had not re- 
membered it. As to who the woman was, she had specu- 
lated until her brain had ached with vague conjecture, but 
never one hint of it had fallen from her lips till now. 

She put the question to Ray Sylvane, standing very near 
him, with her eyes flashing on his face, and she saw an 
abashed look come into it. 

He had meant to have explained truthfully about the 
drugged water which had been given to him by Electra 
Dean' but the manner of her question had baffled him in 
the design; for he could not have explained to her the 
motive which had led him to turn his horse s head in the 
direction of Granny Dean’s cottage that evening, any 
more than he could have explained it to himself at the 
time. 

Embarrassment held him silent for the space of half a 
minute, during which Kate Vance had stood before him 
I flushed and quivering. She broke the brief pause, and her 
low voice was hoarse and unsteady. 

I “Ray Sylvane, let me tell you something, and when T 


32 


ELECTRA. 


do, it is, please understand, the very last thing I ever ex- 
pect to say to you. Now hear me. Since I have come to 
know you, since I have come to see you as you are, I feel 
that I can never be sufficiently grateful to you for saving 
me the disgrace of being your wife.” 

Without waiting an instant for him to reply, she turned 
from him and went swiftly away toward the cottage, and 
he made no attempt to follow her. 

He stood gazing after her until she disappeared in the 
leaden gloom which had by this time settled over sea and 
land, and a miserable realization had come to him that be- 
tween him and her a great gulf was yawning which he 
could not bridge over. 

He realized forcibly, for the first time, how useless, 
how worse than useless, would be any attempt on his 
part to explain his conduct on the tenth of April. 

The consciousness came upon him that if he should tell 
the truth — the whole truth — in regard to his movements 
that evening, and should reveal the treachery he had re- 
ceived at the hands of Electra Dean, it would seem but a 
weak tissue of falsehood— a bit of sensational romance, to 
be rejected as the fabrication of his own brain. 

“I am glad she didn't let me speak and explain,” he 
muttered, lifting his hand to draw it in a tremulous way 
over his forehead, where a cold moisture bad gathered ; 
“ she would not have believed me, and I could not have 
blamed her for it. The whole story seems incredulous 
almost to me.” 

He turned his back on the little cottage into which Kate 
had disappeared, and walked slowly and heavily over the 
sand toward his hotel. 

Like golden blossoms on the sky, the stars were unfold- 
ing one by one, and the ocean, which was as smooth as a 
mirror, reflected them on its polished surface. 

The low sound of the water lapping the shore was as soft 
as the murmur of the lazy night wind that fluttered against 
him as he walked on, with his head bowed on his breast. 

He was thinking of Electra Dean as he had thought of 
her many, many times since the bright March morning 
when he had first beheld her dark, beautiful face framed 
in a crimson hood, and glowing with indignation at the 
touch of Miss Vance’s whip. 

“Who would ever have supposed that she would have 
taken such pains to revenge herself for the insult?” he mut- 
tered. “ Who would have supposed that such overween- 
ing pride as I know Electra Dean possesses, could have 
been fostered in the little hut in that wild ravine ? She is 
a strange creature ; one scarcely knows how to deal with 
her.” 


ELECTRA. 


83 


Muttering thus to himself, he walked slowly on, with 
his forehead knotted in thought. 

The consciousness had dawned upon him that Electra 
Dean, and she only, could possibly bridge over the gulf 
which lay between him and the woman he loved— the gulf 
which Electra Dean herself had called into existence. 

“ If she would go to Kate and would own the truth, ex- 
plaining fully the treachery she practiced on me to prevent 
my presence at Colonel Vance’s on the evening of the tenth 
of April, and also the angry spite that led her to it, I 
think — I know, in fact, that Kate would credit the 
story, and it might possibly lead her to forgive me. I 
wonder if it would be possible to induce Electra Dean to 
make that confession?” 

He went on, lost in perplexing thought, his mind run- 
ning continually on the feeling of spite, and the thirst for 
vengeance, which he believed had alone actuated Electra 
Dean when she had given to him that drugged potion. 

Never for an instant did the idea that she might have 
i been driven to it by any other sentiment cross his mind, 
j He had not the faintest suspicion that she entertained any 
1 partiality for himself. If he had done so, he would not 
nave formed the purpose which, before he reached the 
hotel, settled on his mind, and which he determined to set 
I himself immediately to perform. 

1 That purpose was, to go to Electra Dean, and in some 
! way, he had no idea what, to induce her to make peace be- 
tween himself and Kate Vance. 

> “She can do it, and she only,” he muttered, as he 

* stepped on the veranda of the hotel, “and somehow or 
other, I will find means to make her do it. Tomorrow 

• morning I will set out, on the first available boat that 
i touches here, for the old ravine in Kentucky, and for 

Granny Dean’s cottage, and if I don’t make Electra serve 
t as a witness in my favor, why then — I will know the rea- 
ls son of my failure — that’s all !” 

But the reason that might come to him never suggested 
f itself to his mind for an instant. 

? Ray Sylvane was an impulsive person who, having 
i iumped at a resolution, was always very hasty in carrying 
e it out ; and so he acted in the present instance, and three 
days afterward he was registered at the old Red Star Hotel 
0 in the village of Wildwood. 

r After partaking lightly of the frugal breakfast, he arose 
i- from the table and sauntered out into the little yard in 
e front of the building. 

3 1 A man with very black eyes and hair, and a Hercules in 
si i proportions, was crossing the green plat at the time, and 
the and Ray Sylvane met face to face, and the young gen- 


84 


ELECTRA. 


tleman took the opportunity to make an inquiry which 
had been in his mind ever since his arrival an hour before 
at the Red Star. 

“Good-morning, Barry. By the bye, Barry, is old 
Granny Dean still living with her grand daughter in the 
ravine?” 

The natural scowl on the dark, handsome face of the 
man deepened very perceptibly, and his fingers closed in a 
spasmodic grip over the bridle he held in his hand. He 
looked as if the question had irritated him, but he answer- 
ed civilly, with his voice only a trifle more growling than 
usual : 

“Yes, they live there yet.” 

He walked away across the grass plat as he spoke, and 
Ray Sylvane went on to the yard gate, through which he 
passed, and turned his steps in the direction of the pict- 
uresque ravine a half mile distant. 

Notwithstanding the preoccupied state of his mind, and 
the mission on which he was bent, his eyes, always keen 
to perceive beauty, was attracted by the pleasing effect 
which the season had wrought by sprinkling bright flowers 
on the rugged hills between which he was passing, and by 
covering the great rocks with many shades of velvety 
moss. 

But he was diverted from the contemplation of the in- 
animate features of the scene, by an object that was in 
harmony with them, and yet of an entirely different order 
of creation. 

That object was the figure of a woman moving with a 
free, graceful step over the rocks fifty yards before him. 

He instantly recognized her, and he quickened his pace, 
until he was so near her that the sound of his footsteps 
fell on her ear, causing her to look around. 

As she did so, he called out : 

“Wait, Miss Electra, I was going to see you. But I 
would rather talk to you here.” 

She instantly halted, and waited for him to come up to 
her, with her red lips compressed, and the rich color very 
deep on her dusky face, and the light very bright in her 
black eyes. 


CHAPTER XI. I 

ANXIETY. ( 

Even in the state of anxiety in which he was, and as j 
much in love with another woman as he was, Ray Sylvane, 
poet and artist by nature, felt his heart stirred with admira- i 
tion as he halted before Electra, where she stood in all her ( 


ELECTRA. 85 

rare beauty and her unstudied grace amid the mossy 
stones. 

His feeling of bitterness toward her seemed to be borne 
away on the light winds that paused for an instant in their 
flight to caress the rings of jet black hair on her forehead, 
and his voice was very soft as he said : 

“ I want to have a conversation with you, Electra — you 
will let me call you Electra, won’t you ?” he broke off to 
ask, looking down from his superior height into her flushed 
face. 

There was a slight tremulousness about her full red lips, 
when she unclosed them to utter a response, which she 
gave in one curt word : 

“Yes.” 

He glanced around, and his eyes catching sight of a 
large flat rock, cushioned with velvety moss, he motioned 
toward it, saying: 

“Let us sit there, and then we can talk comfortably.” 

She turned obediently, and seated herself upon it, and he 
dropped down on the space beside her. 

Her hands crept together, and toyed nervously on her 
lap, and she looked down at them half shyly, half sullenly, 
while his brown eyes, always evincing the admiration her 
picturesque beauty awakened within him, were fixed upon 
her face. 

“You are a wonderfully handsome girl, Electra,” he 
said, breaking the brief silence which had come between 
them, and speaking as if the assertion had been wholly in- 
voluntary. “ It is hard to believe that such a fair casket 
could enshrine a malicious spirit. I don’t believe it does ; 
I believe that your heart is good.” 

The tribute of praise which she could not but feel was 
sincerely offered, "pleased her, evidently, for a flash went 
over her face, that was as bright in its way as was the 
stray sunbeam that glittered on the dusky locks of her un- 
covered head ; but she did not speak, nor did she raise her 
eyes from their contemplation of her interlacing fingers. 

Ray Sylvane, loving beauty as he did for its very perfec- 
tion, could not but feel all his soul turn in kindness toward 
this girl. 

A memory of the great wrong she had done him was 
present with him as he sat there on the mossy rock beside 
her, but as certainly there was no thought of bitterness 
connected with it. 

Her beauty had won his forgiveness for the injury she 
had done him, and it had won also trust in her. 

“Electra,” he said, placing his hand softly, and as a 
brother might have done, on one of her own, not noticing 
that it trembled like a frightened bird in his clasp, “ Elec- 


36 


ELECTRA, 


tra, in the blindness of your anger toward somebody else, 
and in order to spite somebody else, you did me a great 
wrong once— a wrong that has caused me much sorrow. I 
have come to ask you to undo it— for my sake. You will, 
won’t you?” 

He asked the question softly, tenderly, never doubting, 
in the spell which her beauty had wrought over him, but 
that she would acquiesce. His heart went out in kindness 
toward her, and he felt that hers came to him fraught 
only with the same feeling. Therefore, he did not doubt 
but that she would grant his petition. 

The fringed lids were lifted suddenly from the black 
eyes, and they looked straight into his own as she asked 
sharply : 

“What do you want me to do?” 

More warmly he clasped in his own the little brown hand, 
and he bent his face nearer over hers, as he answered : 

“ I want you to see Miss Vance, and explain to her just 
why it was that I was not at Silver Bend on the tenth of 
April. She would not believe me, but she would believe 
you, and she would forgive and trust me again. I know 
you will do that for me, because I want you to do it, and 
because it is right and just for you to do it.” 

He saw the quick fire that leaped into her black eyes ; 
he saw the warm rich glow struck from her face, and then 
her hand was snatched from him, and she sprang to her 
feet, with her graceful form trembling like an aspen leaf. 

“ Explain to her — I would see her dead first!” she cried, 
hoarsely. “ I saved you from her, and you want me to 
give you back to her, and I tell you I would see you dead 
first ! I would kill you with my own hands, and then kill 
myself afterward, because I had done it, rather than I 
would give you to her ! And I tell you, and I swear it be- 
fore all the holy angels, that you shall never marry Kate 
Vance ! If she had never struck me that blow with her 
whip, still you should not marry her if I had strength to 
prevent it! I will peril my life, and if need be, I will lose 
it, to save you from her. What would life be to me but a 
hell if I knew you as the husband of Kate Vance, if I knew 
that all your kind words and smiles were given to her ? No, 
sir, I will not undo the mischief I have done, but I will, in- 
stead, keep you and Kate Vance apart as long as I live, so 
help me God 1” 

Her voice at times had choked in her throat, and then it 
had risen almost to a shriek. She was fairly beside her- 
self, and the strength of her violent passion struck Ray 
Sylvane dumb with wonder. 

Not until she had ceased speaking, and had suddenly 
turned from him, disappearing around a curve in the 


ELECTRA . 


37 


ravine, and he was left to collect his scattered thoughts, 
did he come to comprehend the meaning which had been 
conveyed through her violent words. 

But with the swiftness and vividness of a flash of light- 
ning, it struck his understanding. 

Electra Dean loved him ! 

It was such an unexpected revelation that at first he 
could only wonder at it ; but as he sat there thinking of it, 
with the flower-starred bills rising around him, and with 
the brook purling at his feet, and the birds warbling over 
his head, there came to be something pleasing in the 
thought. It awakened little warm thrills in his heart to 
recall her to his mind in all the glow of her wild, pictur- 
esque beauty, when she had made that passionate avowal. 

“Poor child!” he muttered, lying back on the mossy 
stone with his eyes closed, and with the light wind toying 
with his brown hair, “I am sorry, very sorry, that she 
should have taken such a violent fancy to me. I am sure 
I never tried to win it from her.” 

In saying that he had not tried to win her fancy, he had 
spoken truthfully; but when he told himself that he “was 
sorry, very sorry, that she had taken a fancy to him,” he 
had testified falsely to his own soul, and his heart, that 
was thrilling with an undeniably sweet consciousness, bore 
witness to the perjury. 

Ray Sylvane remained there in the ravine, tying on the 
mossy stones, with the songs of the wild-birds in his ears, 
the fragrance of the wild flowers in his nostrils, the bit of 
clear blue sky overhead in his eyes, and the memory of 
Electra Dean in his mind. 

He would have been glad if she had not left him so ab- 
ruptly, he thought. She had not given him time to explain 

I the situation to her, or he could have made it plainly evi- 
dent to her that he and she could never be anything to each 
other save the best of friends — he would like to be a sort of 
a brother to her; he would like to educate her, to advance 
her in life. It was such a pity that she should waste all 
her glorious beauty there in that lonesome hollow. He 
would see her again, and make her understand that if she 
would do him the great favor he asked of her, then he 
would adopt her as a sister, and would educate her. 

His thoughts ran on in this strain fQr more than an hour, 
and when at last he arose and turned his face toward the 
I village again, he muttered : 

1 “I will remain for a while at the Red Star, and by see- 
I ing Electra from time to time, and by making her under- 
I stand how impossible it is for her and I ever to be any- 
| thing to each other except good friends, I believe I can so 
| work upon her better nature that she will bring peace be- 


ELECTRA. 


tween Kate and me when she and her father return to Sil- 
ver Bend. It will only be three months until they return 
home, and there is no telling what great changes may be 
wrought in that time. At any rate, I think I can work a 
revolution in the sensitive nature of Electra Dean, if time 
and patience are spared me.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

A THREAT. 

The golden morning dragged itself into the golden after- 
noon, which in its turn crept into the gray twilight, and 
the twilight passed into night. 

In the deep ravine the shadows had gathered first, and 
marched slowly along toward Granny Dean’s cottage by 
the music of a night bird’s sleepy song. 

Something else was going toward Granny Dean’s cot- 
tage also, something that looked like a darker shadow 
amid shadows. 

But it was instead a very substantial body, and it be- 
longed to Barry Tempest, the hostler and man of general 
help at the Red Star. 

He was moving with long rapid strides over the rocks 
that clattered under his heavy tread, and he was making 
his way straight to the cottage of Granny Dean. 

So moving steadily and swiftly on, he reached it in a 
few minutes. 

The cabin door was closed, for the old woman objected 
to the night air as being injurious to her rheumatic limbs, 
but Electra was sitting on the step, knitting by the faint 
starlight. 

She looked up, but did not rise as Barry Tempest ap- 
proached, nor did she speak, until he had first gruffly 
saluted her by name. 

“Electra.” 

“Good evening, Barry,” she responded sullenly, and 
there was in her tone a decided indication that her com- 
pany was not a very agreeable interruption of her soli- 
tude. 

He dropped heavily down on the step beside her, and 
said : 

“ You don’t seem glad to see me. What’s the matter?” 

“ I’m as glad to see you as I ever am,” she responded, 
and it was well, perhaps, that the faint radiance of the 
stars did not permit him to see the disdainful curl of her 
red lip as she made the assertion. 

“ That may be easy enough, because you are never glad 
to see me,” he retorted, with a strong emphasis on the last 
personal pronoun, which caused her to glance at him with 


ELECTRA, 


39 


a keen scrutiny, as if she wanted to read in his dark face 
i the meaning hinted at in his gruff tones. But she said 
with an additional curl of her red lip, which again he did 
not see. 

“ You may think as you please about that. I don’t in- 
tend to contradict you. Because I don’t care what you 
think about anything, I’d as lief you believed one way as 
another.” 

“And you don’t care, may be, that I love you, and that 
I intend to marry you,” he retorted angrily. 

She tossed her head until its short black curls dropped 
1 low on her forehead, and uttered a short, defiant laugh: 

“ I don’t care that you love me at all; you may do as 
you please about that. But as for marrying you — 
why, I shall do about that as I please ; and I shall certainly 
not marry you.” 

“You won’t, hey?” he responded, with an unmistakable 
threat conveyed in his angry tones. “In that game 
there’ll be two against one, and the two will be apt to win 
the fight. You might beat one, but you can’t beat your 
gran'mother and me together.” 

“You think not,” she said, her clear, low voice more 
defiant than before. “ Try it, both of you, and see!” 

“ Look here, ’Lee, I don’t intend to be fooled with, and 
| I want you to know it. I hain’t loved you all these years, 
and I hain’t looked forward to marrying you all the time 
to be balked now. I swear I hain’t. You was quiet enough 
about it until here lately. Something’s come over you, 
I don’t know what, to set you against me; but I intend to 
find out what it is, and I intend to tear it away, whatever 
it is; and I swear to that, too!” 

There was something positively fearful in the fierceness 
of his passion as he said ihat in tones that sounded like a 
succession of angry growls, but it did not seem to make 
any impression on Electra Dean further than to arouse a 
stronger spirit of defiance within her. 

“ I never agreed to marry you,” she said, contemptu- 
ously. “ I didn't give it a thought. You talked to grand- 
’ mother, and grandmother talked to you. And I left you 
both to talk, but all the time I knew you were counting on 
what never would happen. I knew that I would never be 
your wife. Your wife indeed!”— she seemed, in her over- 
weening contempt, to spit the words between her small 
teeth— “ why, I would rather die!” 

All daylong there had been rankling, as it were, in his 
mind an unreasonable and most unaccountable feeling of 
jealousy toward Ray Sylvane. It had been awakened 
wholly by the young gentleman’s inquiry as to whether 
Granny Dean and her granddaughter still lived in the cot- 


ELECTRA. 


40 

tage in the ravine; and by his immediately setting out 
toward it, and by his protracted absence. 

It was that jealousy which prompted his next question: 

“You’d like to marry a gentleman like Mr. Sylvane, I 
suppose ?” 

She shrank a little, as the hoarse, suppressed tones pro^ 
pounded the query, but she answered disdainfully : 

“ I certainly don’t want to marry a gentleman like Barry 
Tempest.” 

He made no response for a minute or so, but she heard 
his heavy breathing as he sat there on the step beside her. 
When he spoke at last he accompanied his words with 
fierce movements of his large head, which seemed to give 
a dangerous emphasis to them. 

“ There is one thing that is very certain, and that is that 
something has made a change in you toward me. You’ve 
always been civil enough before, and I intend to find out 
what it is that has set you against me. And when I do 
find out what it is, it won’t stand between us long, I swear 
it won’t !” 

There was something ferocious about the man, and about 
his growling voice, as he uttered the threat which would 
have intimidated a woman of the least nervous sensibility. 
But Electra Dean was a stranger to those weak fears that 
are so apt to beset the more fortune-favored of her sex, 
whose follies seem to be as much heightened by a fashion- 
able education, as their better qualities are benefited. She 
listened to his threat with angry disdain. 

“ Bah !” she said contemptuously, rattling the knitting 
needles which she had all this time been diligently plying, 
noisily together, “You talk like a fool. Everything sets 
me against you ! You set me against yourself !” 

“ You may make as light of it as you please,” he said, 
angrily, rising to his feet, while the starlight revealed the 
magnificent proportions of his herculean frame as he 
drew it up to its fullest height, “ but I know that some- 
thing’s been at work with you to undermine me, and I in- 
tend to find out what it is. I’m keener than you think I 
am ; I ain’t half the fool you take me for, and what I see, 
I see; and what I know, I know; and I saw Ray Sylvane 
start for this house this morning, and I know that you saw 
him. But what I don't know is, what a grand gentleman 
like him has got to do with a poor girl Tike you. That’s 
what I mean to find out, though, as sure as my name’s 
Barry Tempest !” 

He wheeled on his heel as he spoke, and strode heavily 
away in the dim light ; and as he disappeared from her 
sight in the blackness of the ravine, the sound of his growl- 
ing voice came faintly to her as he muttered to himself ; 


ELECTRA. 


41 


but what those muttered words were she did not hear; yet 
if she had done so they would have awakened more than 
a passing interest in her, for they related to Ray Sylvane, 
and they were : 

“ I’ll watch him. I’ll track him like a blood-hound, and 
if I find that he’s at the bottom of this, that he’s tampering 
with her to set her against me, then, by the Lord, I’ll make 
him suffer for it! I will if I’m hung for it the next hour! 
If he was the king on his throne he shouldn't come between 
me and ’Lee, and he had better not try ; I swear he had 
better not try 1” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

A DANGEROUS MEETING. 

The days glided by. until one week had passed, and dur- 
ing that time Ray Sylvane had remained a guest at the 
Red Star. 

He had not seen Electra Dean since the morning he had 
held that stormy interview with her in the ravine, during 
which she had been betrayed into revealing the state of 
i h^r heart to him. Yet she had never been wholly absent 
from his mind since. He was young, and he was also of a 
sensitive, poetic nature, and the knowledge that she had 
given her love unsought to him, awoke with him a roman- 
tic interest in her, and sent little warm thrills through his 
! heart, which were not awakened, as they usually are, by 
the stirring wings of nestling love, but by its base counter- 
§ feit, which is gratified vanity. 

Yet in all those seven days, during which she had been 
!■ so constantly present with him in his dreamings, he had 
! not sought to see her; he felt that it would be wrong to do 
i so, unless it was to show her the exact footing on which 
they stood toward each other, to make her understand how 
utterly impossible it was that they could ever be anything 
to each other but real good friends. 

“ When she comes to understand that, as I intend she 
shall do when I see her again, she will be willing to explain 
to Kate the part she took in keeping me from Silver Bend 

on the evening of the tenth of April.” 

He told himself that many times during the week that 
i had passed since he had seen her, but he made no effort to 
j put his words into effect. Why he did not he could not 
: have told. He only knew that he shrank from doing so, 
and as he cid, he never once turned his steps toward the 
little cabin in the ravine. 

“ We will meet soon enough,” he muttered, and when 
we do I will have a long sensible talk with her. I will 
leave Chance to guide me.” 


42 


ELECTRA, 


So he loitered about the banks of the little creek, angling 
for the silver perch which were so ready to bite at his 
hook, usually, or strolling through the leafy woods, with 
his gun on his shoulder, hunting the squirrels and the birds 
which abounded in them. 

But no matter in what course he bent his steps, the keen 
eyes of Barry Tempest marked it, and several times, when 
he had been at leisure to do so, he had followed him at a 
distance, in order to make sure that he really was led 
abroad by a desire to fish or hunt, and not by the wish to 
see Electra Dean. 

Barry Tempest was madly jealous of him, and yet he 
could not have given any reason for the feeling, which 
had come instinctively rather than from any reasonable 
cause, seeing that he had none beyond the fact that Ray 
Sylvan e had asked him, on the first day of his arrival 
there, about old Granny Dean and Electra, and on being 
informed that they still resided in the ravine, had turned 
his steps immediately in that direction. 

That circumstance, combined with Electra’s disdain of 
himself that same evening, had awakened Barry Tempest’s 
suspicions and jealousy against Ray Sylvane, and led to 
his determination to watch him secretly, in order to learn 
if his dark conjectures were well founded. 

He was tortured by uncertainty, because his duties at 
the Red Star, and the exactions of his employer there, did 
not permit him to keep as close a watch over the move- 
ments of his suspected rival as he wished; and several 
times while Ray Sylvane was reclining on the river bank, 
dreamily watching his cork floating on the shining water, 
Barry Tempest was working in the stables, and imagining 
the young gentleman holding a lover’s talk with Electra in 
the ravine. 

It was the morning of the seventh day since Ray Syl- 
vane’s arrival at the Red Star, and since his interview with 
Electra, that he slung his gun over his shoulder, and set 
out on a bird-hunt, taking a route which he had not been 
before. 


It was a beautiful morning; the sunlight dropped upon 
him through the branches of the trees like atoms of trans- 
parent gold, as he walked under them, forgetting that he 
was on the quest of birds, and happily leaving the inno- 
cents unmolested, while he softly whistled the air of 
Love s Young Dream.” 


He was thinking, as usual, of Electra Dean, and his 
i? 1 ! H as thri]lln S Wlt h that sense of gratified vanity 
which the memory of her unsought love for himself never 
tailed to awaken, when he suddenly caught sight of a bit 


ELECTRA. 48 

of scarlet through the interstices of the leaves before him. 

Was it the flitting wing of a red bird ? 

The idea suggested itself to his mind only to be discarded 
immediately, for the object he had caught a passing 
glimpse of was very much larger than a bird. 

The whistled air died instantly on his lips, and shifting 
his gun from one shoulder to the other, he went forward, 
quickening his steps, and going in the direction in which 
he had caught a momentary sight of that red object. 

He saw it again; he saw "it clearly now with no obstruc- 
tion of distance nor of foliage. 

It was a red hood covering the head of a woman who 
was kneeling on the ground with her back to him, and dig- 
ging up a small root with an old knife. 

Ray Sylvane’s heart gave a quick leap as he saw her. 

Although her face was turned away from him, he recog- 
nized that kneeling figure with its picturesque garb and its 
unstudied grace. 

It could belong to but one person, and going softly up to 
her, he called her name : 

“ Electra.” 

She looked up with a start, uttering a quick exclamation, 
and springing to her feet in the surprise of his unexpected 
presence. 

“ Where did you come from? What brought you here?” 
she said incoherently, with the rich color coming and 
going on her face, and even darkening her dusky throat 
under the shadow of the red hood. 

With his head a little aslant in the manner usual to him, 
and with his brown eyes looking steadily down into the 
bright, black orbs uplifted to him, he answered : 

“ I came from the Red Star, and as to what brought me 
here, I think you did ; because all the time I was coming 
you seemed to be present with me— to be drawing me to 
you, nearer and nearer at every step. And now that lam 
here, I want to have a long talk with you. Let us sit here 
on this fallen tree.” 

He turned as he spoke, and seated himself on the trunk 
of a great oak that had been been blasted by the lightning, 
and had been wrenched up by the winds ; and she mechan- 
ically placed herself beside him, keeping her face averted, 
however, and keeping the heavily fringed lids lowered 
over her eyes. 

All the week he had been thinking about her— had been 
filled with an undefinable desire to see her; all the week 
he had been turning over in his mind what he should say 
to her when he should see her. But for all that, no words 
came to his lips i.ow as he sat beside her so close that he 


44 


ELECTRA. 


could hear her quick breathing in the breaks of a bird’s 
song that fell in a gush of melody from a tree near by. 

He had set himself to the performance of a stern duty, 
but as he sat there looking into the dark beauty of her 
averted face, for the first time the realization came to him 
that he had set a hard task before himself. 

The wild, sweet song of the bird was not the only sound 
that came unheeded to them as they sat on the fallen oak, 
with that awkward silence between them. There was the 
fall of heavy feet muffled on the soft ground, but coming 
nearer and nearer to them. 

They heard those sounds as they heard the notes of the 
birds— without noticing them— without being conscious, 
indeed, that they were hearing them. 

So a minute or so passed. 

Electra sat with her eyes downcast and her race averted, 
picking nervously at the rough bark of the log between 
them, and he sat gazing dreamily at her. 

They might have seen the owner of the coming feet at 
one instant, if they had thrown a backward glance over 
their shoulders for he suddenly came in sight of them in 
a clear space in the woods not ten yards behind them. 

But they did not look around, so they were unconscious 
of the fact that the gleaming eyes of Barry Tempest were 
fixed upon them, and that rifts of white banded his swarthy 
face here and there, and that his large teeth shone between 
his unsteady lips, like those of a ferocious beast. 

He tried to creep nearer to them, in order to hear what 
they might say, but the sharp cracking of a dry twig under 
his feet so decidedly claimed the attention of the two sit- 
ting there on the fallen tree, that they both started invol- 
untarily to their feet. 

In another instant, with the vivid color burning like fire 
on her face, Electra darted away, disappearing in the thick 
growth of young saplings, and leaving the two men stand- 
ing and regarding each other very much like two incensed 
wild animals. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

JEALOUSY. 

Ray Sylvane was vexed at the interruption which had 
brought his interview with Electra to such an abrupt and 
unsatisfactory end, and he showed it in the dark frown 
which he bent on Barry Tempest. 

Tempest, on his part, was almost blind with jealousy and 
wrath, and there were ugly spots on his face mottling it 
with purple, and a dangerous gleam in his black eyes. His 


ELECTRA. 


45 


arms were hanging at his side, and his fingers worked 
nervously on the palms of his hands. 

“I want to speak to you,” he said, his voice sounding 
like an unsteady growl, while he accompanied his words 
with slight moyements of his head which were ominous of 
the dangerous capabilities within him— “ I want to speak 
to you about her.” 

A quick turn of his eyes, and a slight gesture in the di- 
rection where Electra had disappeared, plainly indicated 
the person he had alluded to, and Ray Sylvane understood 
him. 


“If you have anything to say to me, say it in as few 
words as possible,” he responded haughtily, aroused to 
something of anger by the menacing tone and appearance 
of the man. 

“ I will say it in a few words,” Tempest responded, the 
ugly spots growing darker on his face. “What I want to 
know is what you mean by that girl ? Do you mean fair 
and square by her ? Do you mean to marry her ?” 

Never in his life had Ray Sylvane been so taken aback, 
as it were, as he was by that question. He took a few un- 
easy steps, and cast a glance around like one who is hope- 
lessly puzzled, and who vainly seeks a solution to some 
unexpected problem. 

It was only a momentary bewilderment, and then his 
eyes, piercing and disdainful, met the menacing gaze of 
his questioner unflinchingly. 

“ I would like to know, my friend, by what right you 
presume to call me to account for anything I may do, or 
for any intention I may harbor! Until I am brought to 
acknowledge that right I shall certainly not trouble my- 
self to enter into any explanation to you.” 

The withering contempt, conveyed more in his voice 
than in his words, had no effect upon Barry Tempest, who 
had been accustomed to disdainfully given commands in 
his manhood, just as he had been accustomed to blows in 
his friendless childhood, and who had received them as his 
natural meed, as quietly as Ray Sylvane received testi- 
monials of respect. So he responded to the question, 
rather than to the manner of its delivery. 

“You want to know what right I’ve got to ask you what 
you mean by running after Electra Dean, do you? I’ll 
tell you what right I’ve got. I’ve got the right of being 
her best friend; the right of being the man that always 
looked for’rud to marrying her. If it ain’t my right to 
watch over her, I intend to make it my right. The likes 
of you never mean honest by the likes of her. But I tell 
you, Mr. Ray Sylvane, that if any harm comes to her 


46 


ELECTRA. 


through you, I’ll kill you for it. I will, as sure as God’s in 
Heaven.” 

His fingers were clinched now upon his palms, and the 
words of his threat came in a lower, hoarser growl than 
his voice had taken before, and Ray Sylvane's head was 
more haughtily lifted as he heard it. 

A wave of resentment at the impertinence of this man 
whom he disdained, swelled within him. But it was only 
momentary, for it swiftly subsided before the conscious- 
ness that the offender very evidently loved Electra Dean, 
and was naturally jealous and suspicious of him. Pe re- 
membered what a vast distance in their social positions 
lay between himself and Electra Dean, and that naturally 
enough the most innocent attentions on bis part to her 
might be misconstrued, especially by her betrothed lover — 
as the words of Barry Tempest had led him to believe he 
was. So the resentment dying out in him gave place to a 
sort of contemptuous pity. 

He spoke civilly. 

“ I have no evil intentions toward the girl, you may rest 
assured Of that ; and I have no idea of interfering with any 
claim you may have upon her.” 

So saying, he turned on his heel and walked away, and 
Barry Tempest, after standing for a minute staling sul- 
lenly after him, went away also, but in an opposite di- 
rection. 

His course led through the woods, and down the slope 
to the little cabin of old Granny Dean. 

“Iil let her know that he don’t mean to marry her, 
whatever else he may mean,” he muttered, striding deter- 
minedly on. “ If she thinks she can throw me down, and 
let him walk over me like, she’s mightily mistaken, and I 
mean to let her know it. If he’s the cause of her putting 
on airs with me, I mean to find it out before I sleep to- 
night ; and it won’t be good for him if he comes between 
her and me. I’ll swear it won’t 1” 

So muttering to himself, he went down the rocky and 
rather steep declivity, and appeared before Granny Dean 
as she sat sunning herself in front of the cabin door on a 
wooden stool. 

She looked up, exclaiming in her quavering voice : 

“ Lord bless you, Barry, you come like a sperit! I wasn’t 
thinkin’ about you bein’ a-near.” 

“I don’t come like a very good sperit neither, granny,” 
he responded, glancing around, and into the open door 
of the cabin, as if in quest of some one. “ Where’s ’Lee?” 

“ I don’t know,” the old woman responded, resting her 
shriveled chin on the head of the cane she held between 
her knees. “ I can’t keep up with ’Lee. She said this 


ELECTRA. 


47 


mornin’ that she was goin’ out to dig some yellow root, and 
may be that’s what took her away. She’s be’n gone a good- 
ish bit, now.” 

Barry Tempest dropped down on a large flat rock at his 
feet, and said sullenly : 

“ What she went to find, I think, was in the shape of a 
young man that she’d a plagued sight better be letting 
alone !” 

“What young man?” the old woman asked sharply, 
turning her head, and peering at him with her sharp, 
bright eyes, from under her shaggy brows. “ She don't 
know no young man except you.” 

“ She don’t!” he ejaculated with angry contempt, jerking 
his huge frame so as to bring a great many of its strong 
muscles into motion. “I happen to know better than that, 
granny. I saw her talkin’ to one in the woods, not a half 
hour ngo.” 

“ Who was it?” the old woman asked, and there was 
more of curiosity than anything else evinced by her quav- 
ering tones. “I never heerd her say that she knowed 
any young man.” 

“ And you won't be apt to hear her say so,” he responded, 
speaking attain with that angry contempt, and accompany- 
ing his words with that jerking motion of his body. 
“ ’Tain’t likely that she’ll tell you or anybody else that she's 
in the habit of meeting Mr. Ray S.vlvane out in the woods.” 

At the mention of the young gentleman’s name the old 
woman uttered a gurgling laugh. 

“ And I’ll be hound ’Lee never told you the trick she 
played on him the night he was a-goin’ to be married to 
Kate Vance,” she said. 

“What trick?” Tempest asked surlily, but evidently 
vividly interested. 

“ Why, givin’ him a good dose of my sleepin’ drops that 
evenin’,” she responded, chuckling. “ It kept him a sleep- 
in’ fast enough, with his head on that very rock vou’re 
a-sittin’ on, while Miss Kate and all the grand folks at 
Silver Bend was a- waitin’ fur him in their weddin’ finery.” 

“What made her do that?’’ he asked, sharply. “Did 
she think she could get him for herself?” 

“She done it because that proud jade at Silver Bend hit her 
with her rid in’ whip like she had been a dog. ’Lee Dean's 
got her father’s blood in her, and she wa’n’t goin’ to take 
it. She set herself to pay Kate Vance back, and she done 
it that evenin’. I’ll be bound, it hurt her just as bad for 
her beau not to come to marry her after she had fixed for 
it, and had all the rich people there, as the cut of her whip 
hurt ’Lee. They ain’t married yet, and they won’t be in a 
hurry if ’Lee can help it.” 


48 


ELECTRA, 


A queer look of perplexity was blending with the sullen 
anger which had been before on the dark, handsome face 
of Barry Tempest. 

The question uppermost in his mind was, whether it was 
spite toward Miss Vance or love for Ray Sylvane which 
had actuated her to prevent the marriage. 

At that moment the sound of dry twigs breaking under 
a succession of light footsteps fell on his ear, and as he 
looked in the direction from whence the sounds proceeded, 
he saw Electra coming slowly up the ravine, with her arms 
full of roots and vines. 

He arose and went hurriedly to meet her, and placing 
his hand heavily on her shoulder, he said, while he pointed 
toward a fallen tree a few paces away, and beyond the 
reach of Granny Dean’s shrewd eyes: 

“ Sit there with me. Before God, I mean to come to an 
understanding with you before I sleep to-night I” 


CHAPTER XV. 

WARNING. 

Electra cast a defiant look into the dark face of Barry 
Tempest, as if she had an idea of refusing him the inter- 
view he demanded ; but the resolute expression his features 
wore may have influenced her to grant it, for she seated 
herself on the fallen tree he had indicated, and he placed 
himself beside her. 

Her forehead was drawn into a rebellious frown, and she 
kept her eyes turned persistently away from him. 

“ I want to know what you are to Ray Sylvane, or what 
he is to you, that you should meet him out in the woods, 
as you did this morning?” Tempest said, plunging reck- 
lessly and angrily into the heart of the subject he meant 
to discuss with her, and speaking in a tone of surly com- 
mand that was exasperating to a person of her quick, fiery 
temper. 

The conscious color which had been on her face when 
she had caught sight of him sitting before the cabin door, 
deepened into a vivid red. She lifted and turned her 
head, sending a flashing glance upon him from her bright 
black eyes. 

“It is none of your business what anybody is to me,” 
she retorted, with a slight quiver of defiance running over 
her. “ And now I tell you to attend to your own affairs, 
and leave me to manage mine. I don't want anything to 
do with you, Barry Tempest, and I don’t want you to ever 
speak to me again.” 

She was in a violent passion, as was evinced by her 
quivering form, her flushed face, and her glittering eyes. 


ELECTRA. 


49 


She made a movement to rise to her feet, but Barry 
Tempest’s strong hand fell heavily on her arm, forcibly 
detaining her. 

“You ain’t a-goin’ to stir from here until I come to an 
understanding with you,” he said, fiercely. “And you 
might as well make yourself contented. I’ve come to say 
something to you, and I’m goin’ to say it, and you’re goin’ 
to hear it, too.” 

All the opposition that her untamed nature was capable 
of was expressed in her face as she sat there looking at 
him with her head thrown back, and her arm in his grasp. 

“When you put on such high airs with me Thursday 
night, I knew that there was something at the bottom of 
it, and I made up my mind that I was goin’ to find out 
what it was, and I have found out ! It’s Ray Sylvane, the 
fine gentleman that I found you sitting beside in the 
woods a while ago! Are you such a fool, ’Lee Dean, as to 
believe any of his soft talk? Are you such a fool as not to 
know that the likes of him look upon the likes of you as so 
much dirt under their feet? Do you suppose that he would 
marry you? No, he would see you hanged and quartered 
first! And if you think anything else you’re a fool. I 
love you, and love you honestly, and am willing any day, 
or hour, or minute that you may name to marry you; but 
I ain’t willin’ to let you knock me down and trample on me 
because you took a fancy to Ray Sylvane, and what’s 
more, I won’t stand to have you do it, nor to have him do 
it, neither; and so I tell you, and so I’ll tell him !” 

He was working himself, if possible, into a greater pas- 
sion than he had been in at first, and his voice trembled 
into indistinctness, and his fingers tightened in their grip 
on her arm until she almost cried out with the pain. But 
she did not cry out; she would, ip the stubborn pride of her 
untutored nature, have died, rather than- utter any sound 
to indicate that he had the power to cause her any suffer- 

m |’he set her teeth hard together, and drew her breath 
quiveringly through her distended nostrils. 

His taunts had aroused the evil in her nature a great deal 
more than his threats had awakened her fears, and in the 
recklessness of her mood she defied him. 

“If I choose to see ” she hesitated in her sentence, 

and a suggestive play of her features for an instant did 
not escape his observation— then she went on, commencing 
; the sentence over : 

“If I choose to see any one a thousand times a day, it is 
none of your business! It is none of your business who I 
fancy so long as I don’t fancy you , and you may stake 
your life that I don’t do that! I hate you, Barry Tempest 


50 


ELECTRA. 


—I hate you ! I sha’n’t knock you down and trample on 
you, sha’n’t I? Bah, I could spit on you!” 

Barry Tempest had been accustomed all his life to con- 
temptuous treatment, and he had from habit learned to 
endure it, indeed, he scarcely noticed it— but not from her 
could he take it — and not from Ray Sylvane after that con- 
versation with her ; it would hereafter be dangerous for Ray 
Sylvane to cross his path, and Electra Dean came to under- 
stand that fact when he sprang to his feet trembling with 
the passion that is so terrible to see in a strong man. 

“ I came here this morning to warn you against Ray 
Sylvane, and now I tell you that you had better warn him 
against me. You have just the same as knocked me down, 
and trampled on me, and spit on me for his sake, for I 
know he's at the bottom of it, and as sure as you live I’ll 
take it out of him if he crosses me again ! You’d better 
give him up, ’Lee Dean ! For his sake, as well as your own, 
you’d better give him up ! If you wasn’t nothin’ to me, I’d 
warn you against him, you bein’ the girl that you are, and 
he bein’ the man that he is, for the ‘ Man in the Moon ’ 
would marry you jest as soon as Ray Sylvane would. But 
when a man has loved a girl, and has looked forrud to 
marryin’ her as long as I have you, then he'd tear the heart 
out of the man that comes between him and that girl, if he 
was hung for it the next minute. May be he’d be glad of 
the halter that put him out of the world and out of his 
misery.” 

His harsh, fierce tones had gradually softened, until at 
the end there came a break in them that was touching to 
hear, it evinced such a world of pain. But it did not touch 
Electra Dean. She was so thoroughly incensed against 
him that she could almost have slain him where he stood, 
in his grand, rugged beauty, before her. 

Every word he had spoken ; every bitter truth which he 
had uttered, and which had struck upon the tender spot of 
her infatuation for high-born Ray Sylvane, had maddened 
her against him. 

She sprang to her feet, letting the roots and vines, which 
she had been unconsciously holding all this time in her 
arms, fall to the ground, and said, with the slender brown 
fingers working nervously together, and with her breast 
heaving stormily, and with her eyes flashing with defi- 
ance: 

“ If you think I am afraid of you, either for myself or 
for anybody else, you are very much mistaken, Barry 
Tempest, great coward and ruffian that you are!” 

She turned her back upon him, and walked away toward 
the cabin, but Tempest strode after her, and grasping her 


ELECTRA. 51 

shoulder forced her to face him. And never before had 
she looked into a countenance so inflamed with passion. 

His face was deathly pale, except for the purple spots 
that appeared here and there upon it, and his eyes had the 
glassy look of a madman’s. 

“ If I kill him, you will have yourself to blame for it! 
And I would kill him just as soon as I would kill a rattle- 
snake that had come between you and me!” 

Without a word in reply, she wrenched her shoulder 
from his grasp and went away toward the cabin, not look- 
ing back once, but hearing the sound of his heavy feet as 
he moved down the rocky ravine echoing clearly on the 
morning air. 

“’Lee Barry was sayin’ somethin’ about you and Ray 
Sylvane,” Granny Dean said sharply, as the girl ap- 
proached — “ what was it ?” 

“ I don’t know,” Electra answered crisply. “ Barry Tem- 
pest is always saying something that has no sense in it.” 

She passed into the house and flung herself on a low 
stool, and bent her flushed and aching forehead over on 
her knees. 

There was a feeling of oppression about her heart which 
she could not account for, and which gave her a feeling of 
misery and apprehension that she had been a stranger to 
before. 

She did not know that it was the effect of the reaction of 
her over-strained nerves. Indeed, it is doubtful if she 
knew that her system was furnished with any such deli- 
cate little chords. She only knew that she felt utterly 
wretched, and that the shadow of some impending calam- 
ity seemed to be closing around her and suffocating her. 

For some time, as she sat there with her forehead bent 
over on her knee, the nature of that miserable foreboding 
did not take shape in her mind. But as her thoughts kept 
running continually on Ray Sylvane and Barry Tempest 
the horrible conviction came to her that Barry Tempest 
would attempt to carry out his threat— that Ray Sylvane 
was in terrible danger from his hands. 

Electra Dean sprung to her feet. 

‘.‘I must warn him!” she muttered. “ I must warn him 
against Barry Tempest !” 

She flitted out through the back door of the cabin, and 
passed nimbly as a squirrel up the steep hill-side and away 
toward the village, to see and warn Ray Sylvane of the dire 
danger that she felt strangely convinced threatened his 
life. 


ELECTRA . 


CHAPTER XVI. 

A STARTLING PARAGRAPH. 

Electra Dean walked on with unflagging swiftness over 
the hill and through the green woodlands. 

When she reached a point a half mile away from the 
cabin in the ravine, she came in sight of the little village 
whose dozen or so of whitewashed houses nestled in the 
green of the river valley. 

The picturesque river, with its fringe of swamp willows, 
ran in front of it. with its waters glistening and sparkling 
in the bright sunlight, like a broad belt studded with dia- 
monds. 

As she halted for an instant on the brow of the gentle 
eminence overlooking the clear landscape, her sweeping 
glance caught sight of a solitary figure wandering slowly 
along the green bank of the stream. 

She was not so far away but that she could recognize that 
figure. ^ 

There was no other like it in the village— no other that 
had the lordly and yet careless bearing that characterized 
that figure. 

She instantly recognized it as belonging to Ray Sylvane, 
and after a moment of irresolution, she started on again, 
her nimble feet descending the hill with the free grace of a 
deer’s movements, and skirting the village, she made her 
way toward him where he walked slowly along lost in 
reverie. 

He did not hear her light steps, nor did he know that she 
was near him until she spoke to him, calling his name ab- 
ruptly : 

“Mr. Sylvane.” 

He turned with a start, and saw her standing where she 
halted less than two yards behind him. 

He advanced toward her, holding out his hand. 

“I was thinking of you,” he said, quietly. “I am glad 
you are here ; I want to talk to you.” 

Her presence did not surprise him— it seemed, somehow, 
the most natural thing in the world that his intense thought 
of her should have evoked her presence. 

She did not take his hand, but she toyed nervously with 
the folds of her apron, and her face was flushed and knot- 
ted with embarrassment; and, noticing it, his hand fell at 
his side, and he stood before her with his brown eyes fixed 
inquiringly upon her. 

Now that she was face to face with him, it seemed a 
hard matter to say what she had come there to tell him; 
so she spoke rather incoherently, avoiding his eyes and 
glancing helplessly up the shining river. 


ELECTRA. 58 

“ Mr. Sylvane— I wanted to You had better take care 

of Barry Tempest. He may do you harm.” 
p “Why should Barry Tempest do me harm?” he asked, 
bending a trifle nearer to her, and still looking curiously 
> down into her face. 

i He knew why when he put the question to her as well 
! as he did after she had responded to it with sudden, reck- 
>.[ less candor: 

“He wants to marry me, and he thinks it is on your 
account that I won’t have him ; so — so ” 

She floundered helplessly in her speech, and tears rose 
i into her eyes, over which the heavily fringed lids quiv- 
ered. 

“ I know that he is jealous of me,” Bay Sylvane said, 
j speaking softly, deprecatingly. “I am sorry for it. He 
j has no reason to be. you know. He has mistaken my feel- 
! ings toward you. He thinks that I regard you as a lover ; 
he doesn’t understand the sort of brotherly feeling I have 
for you.” 

He was glad of the opportunity of telling her that. It 
was what he had been thinking of telling her while he had 
been; wandering alone there on the river bank. 

He saw the rich color coming and going on her face, and 
I he saw the tears seem to be suddenly dried in* her eyes, 
and he went on impetuously : 

“Let us understand each other, Electra; let us be 
friends. I have forgiven you for the great unkindness 
you did me, although it has cost me, and it still costs me,, 
more trouble than you know, because it has put me in a 
false light before the only woman I love or can ever love,’*' 
he went on, in a strongly impressive voice. “ I want yon 
to undo that wrong — you only can do it — for my sake— for* 
me who holds a brother’s love almost for you. You will 
do it, won’t you? You will explain to Kate Vance the mis- 
chievous prank you played upon me that evening, when I 
declare to you that nothing unpleasant will come to you 
for the confession, but a great deal of good instead.” 

He spoke with soft pleading; but if he had expected to 
melt her to his mood, he was greatly mistaken. 

Every bit of color went out of her face, leaving it as 
white as that of a corpse, and her eyes were scintillating 
with defiance as she lifted them to his, saying fiercely: 

‘ ‘ No — I will not explain — not to save her life, and yours 
too ! I would see her lying dead here, before I would do 
it!” 

She lifted her foot and brought it down with a vicious 
stamp upon the yielding grass, as if it was upon the body 
of her rival, whom she had pictured as lying dead there. 


54 


ELECTRA. 


Kay Sylvane turned his back upon her, and glanced up 
the river with little knots drawn upon his fine face. 

He realized that further argument, further importunity 
with her would be useless; that he could as soon turn the 
current of that ceaselessly flowing river, as he could turn 
her from her fixed purpose to hold him and Kate Vance 
apart if she had the power to do so. 

He knew the cause of that obstinate resistance, too. 
Knew it with a thrill at his heart which, notwithstanding 
the trouble it gave him, was not wholly uumixed with 
pleasure. For lie knew that it was love for him that actu- 
ated her, and she was such a beautiful woman! 

It was hard to be angry with her for that, the vanity of 
human nature cried out against it: so when he turned to- 
ward her again after a half minute’s whirling thought, he 
spoke gently. 

“ Your decision is very unkind, Eleetra, I can't help feel- 
ing that, but I won't urge you any further. I am going 
away from here to-day, I have made my mind up to that, 
and I don’t want to part with you in anger, because we 
may never meet again.” 

He was looking down into her face, and he saw a wave 
of color rush over, and recede as swiftly, leaving it wanly 
white. He saw her sway unsteadily like a reed shaken by 
a gust of wind, and he stretched out his arm and threw it 
around her, feeling that she was about to fall. 

But in an instant her strong nerves reasserted them- 
selves, and she slid from his clasp, and turning without a 
word, she went swiftly away up the green eminence, and 
he watched her disappear amid the green trees on its 
summit. 

“ I can accomplish nothing by remaining here,” he mut- 
tered, as he slowly resumed his slow pace along the willow- 
edged shore. “ It is better that I should go away— better 
for more sakes than one, perhaps.” 

Then, still slowly walking along the margin of the shin- 
ing river that rolled on and on with its ceaseless music, he 
muttered again to himself : 

“I will go back to the Headlands. I will go back to 
Kate— back to the village where she is, at any rate — where 
I can at least see her day after day, God bless her, if I can- 
not be allowed to speak to her; and something may hap- 
pen to bring us together again. I will go back. I will 
appear in the field, and trust to Providence to give me 
victory.” 

Having settled that point in his mind, the little knots of 
perplexity went out of his face, and he turned and went 
with a resolute step back to the village, and made his wav 

to the Red Star. 


ELECTRA. 


55 


The bell sounded for dinner as he stepped upon the little 
' veranda, so he passed on to the long hall where the table 
was spread, and around which the rustic boarders were 
gathering. 

The mail, which was brought into the village at noon 
1 always by a boy on horseback, and was received and dis- 

! tributed by the landlord of the Red Star, who was the 

postmaster of the place, had come in during his absence, 
and as he took his seat at the table, the mild-voiced host 
handed him a newspaper, saying : 

“ This is all the mail that came for you to-day, Mr. Syl- 
vane. ” 

With a nod of thanks, Ray took the paper and unfolded 
it, running his eyes over the columns while waiting for his 
dinner to be served. 

In the column of correspondence, a letter dated “The 
! Headlands — June 10th,” caught his attention, and with a 
| quickening of the heart he read it over. 

It was short, and only one paragraph of it interested 
him, and that drove the color from his cheeks. 

That paragraph was: 

“There are comparatively few guests here at present, al- 
though every day adds to the number. The acknowledged 
beauty of the place is Miss Vance, the only daughter of 
Colonel Richard Vance, of Silver Bend, Kentucky. It is 
rumored that she has made a conquest of Count Von 
Hirschberg, a German celebrity who is summering here, 
and it is further rumored that they will be married in the 
autumn.” 

Ray Sylvane crushed the paper in his hand, and thrust 
it into his pocket. 

He had no appetite for the frugal and well-cooked din- 
ner that was brought to him. There seemed to be a lump 
in his throat which hindered him from swallowing readily. 

He only quaffed the strong coffee which he had ordered, 
and then he left the table, and went to the little room 
which served the double purpose of office and bar-room, 
and spoke to the young man who shouldered the responsi- 
bilities of both departments. 

“The regular packet is due here this afternoon, is it 
not ?” he asked ; and the young man responded: 

“Yes, sir, she’ll be apt to be along about four or five 
, o’clock.” 

“Make out my bill, if you please,” Ray said, brusquely; 
“ I am going away.” 

The clerk turned to a great musty book, which he opened, 
and drawing a sheet of paper before him, and dipping a 
pen in a dusty ink-bottle, he hastily scratched a few lines 
on the paper, which constituted a receipted bill, and thrust 


ELECTRA. 


56 

it across the counter to Ray Sylvane, who merely glanced 
at the amount specified on it, and paid it. . 

Then he went up to his room, and packing his valise, he 
took it and went away to the river bank, to await restlessly 
the coming of the packet. . 

The slow hours dragged by while he waited, wandering 
along the bank with a fever of impatience over him, until 
the twilight star broke like a silver blossom on the sky. 

Then, and not until then, he heard the startling whistle 
of the delayed steamer, and in a half hour afterward he 
was on board of it, and was passing down the river over 
which the night was darkening. 

“She is mine— mine only, by every right,” Ray Sylvane 
muttered, as he stood looking down at the troubled waters, 

‘ ‘ and it will go hard if I give her up. I will not do it without I 
a struggle !” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

SUSPICION. 

When Ray Sylvane landed at the Headlands, it was late 
at night, and the great multitudes of stars shone like dia- 
mond dust on the sky, and were reflected by the ocean. 

It was past midnight, and the village was sleeping in the 
phosphoric glow sent down from the stars, and the lights 
were extinguished in all the houses except the hotels, where 
a steady radiance poured from the windows of the office of 
each, and where a sleepy clerk nodded in his chair, and 
waited for the arrival of guests whom passing steamers 
might put off to be accommodated with bed and board at 
the Headlands hotels. 

Toward one of those points of light that shone from the 
window of Beach House, Ray Sylvane made his way, and 
presented himself before the sleepy clerk in the office, who 
nodded to him and addressed him by name. 

“Can I have my old room?” Ray asked, and the young 
man, rising stiffly, and accompanying his movements with 
a yawn, went to the register and bent over the page. 

“Your room was No. 19. No, sir; it’s occupied now 
by a gentleman and his wife. The fact is, we’re pretty 
full to-night; the Alaska brought in a crowd at noon, and 
we haven't got a vacant room. I can give you a bed to 
yourself, but you’ll have to occupy the same room with 
another gentleman ; it’s the best we can do for you !” 

He looked inquiringly over the register and across the 
counter at Ray, who was waiting, valise in hand, on the 
other side of the desk, and who responded with something 
of nervous sharpness: 


ELECTRA. 57 

“Well, let me have the bed as soon as possible, for I am 
tired and want to rest.” 

“All right, sir,” the clerk responded, and closing the 
register with a sounding bang, he came around the coun- 
ter and passed out of the office, followed by Ray Sylvane, 
and climbing the dimly lighted stairs, he knocked on the 
door of a room opening into the hall above* 

He was compelled to repeat the alarm three or four 
times before he succeeded in arousing the inmate from his 
heavy slumber. But that he was awakened at last was 
manifested by the sound of muffled steps crossing the floor, 
and by the quick turning of the key in the lock. 

The door was only slightly opened, and a pair of eyes 
peered out, and a curt voice issued through the narrow 
space : 

“What’s wanted?” 

“ I want to put a gentleman into this room to sleep,” the 
clerk responded, and the door was opened wider in order 
that the gentleman might enter; and then came again the 
muffled sound of quick steps as the first occupant of the 
apartment retreated to his bed. 

Ray entered and closed and locked the door after him. 
Then he made his way to the table on which a lamp was 
dimly burning, and brightened the flame. 

As he did so, he very naturally cast a glance toward the 
bed on which his room-mate was lying, and he encountered 
the gaze of that person fixed curiously upon himself. 

It was a square face lying there on the pillow, cleanly 
shaven save for a heavy, brown mustache; the features 
were all strong and clearly cut, and the eyes gazing out 
from under thick brows were gray and bright, and very 
shrewd. 

All this Ray Sylvane noticed in the swift glance he cast 
toward him, and then he turned away and went to the 
other end of the room where his bed was, and prepared 
himself as rapidly as possible to retire, feeling rather than 
seeing that the eyes of his room-mate were still upon him, 
and realizing that they had an effect to render him un- 
easy. 

He turned down the wick of the lamp again, and turned 
into bed, but he could not sleep. He was haunted, as he 
had been ever since he had read it, by that paragraph in 
the newspaper relating to Kate Vance, and the person 
styling himself Count von Hirschberg. 

He didn’t like the German. He had eaten at the same 
table with him for several days, and he had always looked 
on him with growing distrust. He would have felt the 
same way toward him if he had never associated him in 
his mind with that offensive intimacy with the woman he 


ELECTRA. 


58 

himself loved, the woman whom he could not help regard- 
ing, because of what had passed before, as his own, as his 
sacred possession. _ . T , , , . 

He distrusted Count von Hirschberg. It cost him an 
effort to think of him as a gentleman, because he Seemed 
to him to be so lacking in all the instincts of one. 

“ He seems to me to be only an inflated humbug, whom 
I always feel like puncturing,” he said to himself in an 
indistinct growl. “ If he really has the impudence to be 
paying court to Kate, I shall find out whether he really is 
a pearl or a bit of foam. ” 

With the lullaby of the waves washing on the shore, 
blending with the deep, regular breathing of the man in 
the other bed, making a drowsy melody around him, he fell 
at last into a troubled sleep, in which thei e came dreams 
of Kate Vance, and Count von Hirschberg, and Electra 
Dean. 

It was not to be wondered at that his waking thoughts 
should become visions to haunt his sleep. But it was 
strange that in those visions the square face and marked 
features of his room-mate, as he had looked upon them in 
the lamp-light, should also mingle constantly. 

Bo persistently had that face dipped in and out of his 
dreams, that when he waked with a start, and saw it 
before him in the gray dawn, it did not surprise him. 

The owner of that face was at the moment incasing his 
square form, which was short and muscular, into a coat 
of rather worn black cloth; but his shrewd eyes, which 
seemed to be always on the alert for something, were em- 
ployed in searching the face of his room-mate, who, lift- 
ing his lids, detected him, and nodded to him, saying: 

“You are an early riser, sir. The sun will not appear 
for some time yet.” 

“No, not for half an hour or more,” the square-built in- 
dividual responded, and his voice was clear and sharp. “ I 
want to get up to the top of the headlands in time to see 
it rise.” 

“If I was ready I would accompany you,” Ray Sylvane 
said, speaking impetuously. 

“ Well, get ready,” the other responded, in that easy, 
off-hand way which indicates that a person is accustomed to 
meeting and associating with strangers, and seems also 
to indicate that a person has no home ties. ‘ ‘ I will wait 
for you to join me out on the veranda.” 

He opened the door and passed out as he spoke, and Ray 
Sylvane arose, and making a hurried toilet, followed. 

He found the square-built gentleman, indeed, as he had 
said, waiting for him on the veranda, and the two went 
away together over the dew-damp sand toward the head- 


ELECTEA. 59 

lands, which towered up dark and rugged in the gray of 
the morning. 

Ray Sylvane looked curiously down into the strong, 
resolute face, which was at least a foot below his own, and 
'asked with that abruptness which sometimes characterized 
him : 

“What is your name, sir? Tell me something about 
yourself, please.” 

His companion seemed to receive this evidence of curi- 
osity as a most natural expression, and evinced no sur- 
prise nor resentment at it. He thrust his left hand 
through Ray’s arm, and with his right he lifted a plug of 
tobacco to his lips, and bit off a liberal piece before he 
responded : 

“ My name is Harker — Josiah Harker, and I live in New 
York city.” 

The information seemed to be very meager to Ray Syl- 
vane; a singular idea was with him that the man could 
tell so much, if he would; he seemed, singularly enough, 
to be a sort of repository for mysteries ; a sort of human 
casket in which many and great secrets were shut. 

“ You impress me so strangely,” Ray said, with impul- 
sive candor. 

To this admission the man made no comment, he only 
walked on with his hand on his arm, and vigorously 
champed his tobacco. 

“You seem to me to be a sort of puzzle that I want to 
dissect, to see through,” Ray went on after a minute, laugh- 
.ing a little, but nevertheless very much in earnest. 

“You can do that easy enough. It isn’t a hard matter 
to look through any man, or anything. All you want to 
begin with is a little clew.” 

As he said that, he raised his hand and thrust his thumb 
and forefinger absently into his vest pocket. 

At his words a flood of light seemed suddenly to pour 
into the understanding of Ray Sylvane, and he paused 
abruptly and said, with his brown eyes fixed on the square 
face beside him : 

“I would stake heavily on the chances that you are a 
detective.” , , , 

Not a particle of change came into Mr. Harker’s face, 
nor was there the slightest indication of surprise or dis- 
pleasure in his voice as he responded : 

“ I told you that all you needed to find out anything was 
a clew to work on. ana I gave one to you in the very word 
I used. I did it purposely, too. I know that you are a 
man to be trusted. I read you easily, and I may require 
some little assistance in a matter that I have on hand.” 

“ What is it?” Ray Sylvane asked. 


ELECTRA . 


They were climbing the headlands now, and Mr. Barker 
did not respond until they were seated on its summit, and 
their faces were turned toward the reddening east. 

“ What you can do for me,” the detective, as he acknowl- 
edged himself to be, said, in his quiet, matter-of-course way, 
“is very little, and I wouldn’t take you into my confidence 
for it, except for the fact that I am willing for you, as you j 
are my room-mate, to know all about me, and I am a suf- 
ficient judge of human nature to know that I can trust you 
not to reveal any secret of mine that I wish to be kept in- 
violate. I am on the track of a set of diamonds which 
were stolen from a lady in a hotel in New York six months 
ago. I have an idea that the jewels are here, in this vil- 
lage. I fancy that you are a lady’s man, which I am not, 
and what I want you to do, is to notice the diamond rings 
on their fingers, and when you see a large solitaire notice 
if there is a little irregularity about the shape of the stone, 
as if a piece had been chipped off it. And notice then 
if it is not because the claw that holds that part differs from 
the others, by diverging into a cross.” 

Ray Sylvane’s face was knotted. 

Where was it— oh whose finger was it that he had seen 
just such a ring? 

Was it at a table? 

He lifted his hand to his forehead in an effort of mem- 
ory. 

“ I have seen just such a ring as you describe,” he said, 
“but where I cannot remember. I will try to recall it to 
mind.” 

He was interrupted by the sound of voices, and looking 
hastily around, his eyes fell on Kate Yance and Count 
von Hirschberg, who were advancing toward them, and 
who evidently had not seen them. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

ON THE ALERT. 

The man calling himself the Count von Hirschberg, and 
Kate Yance came on side by side, and yet without perceiv- 
lng the two men sitting together there on the brow of the 
headland, because the count was talking earnestly to her 
with bis head, on which rested a broad brim hat, bent low 
over her, and she was listening with down-cast eyes, and 
a flush on her face, which Ray Sylvane felt with a jealous 
pang was not caused wholly by the exercise of climbing 
the eminence. & 

He sprung impulsively to his feet, and Harker rose more 


ELECTRA. 


61 




Then the self-absorbed pair became aware of their prox- 
imity, and halted abruptly. 

Ray Sylvane, yielding to the impulse to speak to her, to 
force recognition from her, advanced toward her, but she 
deliberately wheeled, so that her back was to him, and 
there was no alternative for him but to pass on — which he 
did with a flushed face and a stormily-beating heart, fol- 
lowed by Harker. 

Ray Sylvane walked recklessly down the steep incline, 
and the detective, more careful in his movements, was 
left several yards behind him by the time he had accom- 
plished the descent. But by dint of extra exertion in walk- 
ing, he caught up with him as he strode on over the sandy 
plain below. 

“ Do you know anything about Count von Hirschberg?” 
Harker asked, speaking rather pantingly, because of the 
unusual exercise he had been compelled to take in order 
to reach the side of his companion. 

“No,” Ray answered, curtly ; and then he turned his 
face and fixed his eyes penetratingly on the countenance 
of the detective, and asked : 

“Do you know anything of him? I ask because his 
name is being connected with that of the young lady who 
is with him, and who is a person very dear to me.” 

In his earnestness he had halted, and the two men were 
standing looking into each other’s eyes. 

“No,” Harker answered, sententiously ; and then he 
shrugged his square shoulders and walked on, and Ray 
kept pace at his side. 

A silence of five minutes ensued between them, and then 
the detective asked : 

“ How much does the young lady know of him, do you 
think? Do you suppose that her knowledge of him and 
his antecedents is confined wholly to what he says of him- 


self?” 

“I don’t know,” Ray responded, in a tone of mingled 
pain and anger. And then he added after a minute, speak- 
ing bitterly : 

“It is currently rumored, I hear, that she is going to 
mai-ry him.” 

He unclosed his lips as if to add something else to his 
remarks, but he shut them again over the words. 

“ I would advise her not to be in too great a hurry,” the 
detective remarked, dryly, but with so much of hidden 
meaning in his tone, that Ray again halted abruptly in 
his walk, and laying his hand on his companion’s arm, 
said earnestly, while a deeper flush mounted into his face, 
and a brighter gleam came into his eyes: 

“Harker, tell me what you mean! You will not refuse 


62 


ELECTRA. 


when I tell you that that woman is more to me than any- 
thing else on earth ; that her happiness is greater to me 
than my own.” 

The detective again shrugged his broad shoulders, and 
made a suggestive movement with his heavy brows, as he 
responded : 

“I know actually nothing whatever about him. He 
may be all he pretends to be, but I doubt it, and it is be- 
cause of that doubt that I am here.” 

Ray Sylvane caught his breath in a quick way. 

“What do you suspect? Tell me,” he said, his hand 
tightening in its grasp on the detective’s_arm. 

“ It would be hardly fair to do so,” Marker responded. 
“You know I told you that we detectives work often on 
the slenderest clews, and those clews often mislead us. 
So it is better to say nothing where there is such uncer- 
tainty.” 

“You are afraid to trust me,” Ray said with deep and 
impressive earnestness. “ But you need not be. What- 
ever you may tell me, I swear on the honor of a gentle- 
man, and I am a gentleman, I will keep inviolate.” 

Harker’s shrewd eyes, accustomed to reading faces as if 
they were printed pages, saw the sincerity in his, and saw 
that he was a person he could indeed trust, and who 
might, perhaps, be of service to him even, so he responded 
candidly : 

“I have reason to suspect that this same Count von 
Hirschberg is an adventurer, and that he is moreover a 
thief, or at best, the receiver of stolen goods. I suspect 
that he at this instant knows better than any one else does 
where the diamonds of Mrs. Dulany of New York city are, 
and it is to find out if my suspicion is correct that I am 
here. But don't breathe it to a human being, or I may be 
frustrated in the search, and after all. my suspicion is only 
a suspicion I have as yet not one thread of proof to bind 
my faith to.” 

“Trust me; tell me all you know, and all you suspect, 
and your reasons for suspecting,” Ray said, with little 
drops coming on his flushed face, as if the spray of the 
ocean washing on the beach near by had fallen on it. 

The detective hesitated only for an instant, glancing 
thoughtfully away toward the east, where the sun was 
showing now like a great clot of blood, and then he said, 
starting slowly along again, with Ray Sylvane keeping 
pace with him: 

“The diamonds were stolen in the Astor House, where 
Mrs. Dulany, a wealthy widow, was boarding. She sus- 
pected a servant girl, who was engaged to be married to 
one of the head waiters, of the theft. The girl, by name 


ELECTRA . 


63 


Wilhelmino Bachman, a German girl, has disappeared, and 
the most diligent search for her has failed to discover her. 
Her lover, the waiter, who -was also a German, named Max 
Rosenfield, has also disappeared, and I have an idea that 
this same Count von Hirschberg is Max Rosenfield, clev- 
erly disguised as a titled foreigner, and making a swell on 
those very jewels, perhaps, that are worth ten thousand 
dollars, and other stolen possessions of more or less value. 
I traced the scoundrel, Rosenfield, to a small hotel on the 
levee, and as this very same Count von Hirschberg, whom 
no one seems to have heard of before, took passage on a 
steamer the day after the discovery of the theft, the idea 
struck me that he might be the absconding waiter, and I 
am here to discover if my suspicion has any foundation - in 
fact. You see how meager the clew is, and how necessary 
it is to work quietly and secretly so that my design may 
not be frustrated by a knowledge that I am on that busi- 
ness, which would, of course, make him more wary if he is 
the culprit.” 

The mist, which had resembled the fineness of spray, had 
become beaded drops now on the forehead of Ray Sylvane, 
and he drew his breath hard between his teeth, as he ex- 
claimed, mutteringly : 

' “ My God, it is terrible, and she associates with him on 
terms of equality ! She even contemplates marrying him, 
perhaps! The matter must be sifted, and that, too, speed- 
ily.” • 

They were near the hotel where they were stopping by 
this time, and the detective said: 

“ With your regard for the young lady, you can be at 
least an earnest and secretive aid to me. Together we may- 
be able to tear the mask from the villain if he really is 
wearing one. Come up with me to our room, and I will give 
you a minute description of the stolen jewels, and we will 
form some plan of proceeding.” 

So they passed into the hotel and went together to the 
room which they shared in partnership, and there they 
formed a partnership in the search into the antecedents of 
Count von Hirschberg, -who was at the time uttering pro- 
testations of love to haughty Kate Vance on the sunlit sum j 
mit of the headland. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

ON BOARD THE SWAN. 

Two weeks passed by, and the detective found no evi- 
dence in support of the suspicion he entertained against 
Count von Hirschberg, although he had watched most as- 
siduously to obtain the slightest hint that would point in 


64 


ELECTRA. 


the direction of his guilt, and he had been aided in the 
search by Ray Sylvane. 

Never had man a more diligent assistant in any en- 
deavor than Harker had in Ray Sylvane, who was goaded, 
on to earnestness by the most powerful motives that ever 
actuated any man —love and jealousy. 

In those two weeks he had not once been permitted to 
speak with Kate Yance, and the note he had sent pleading 
for an interview had been returned to him with, only the 
penciled words traced across the envelope : 

“ Returned with the hope that no more may be sent from the 
same source.” 

He was forced to maintain silence where he was burning 
to speak, not only to plead his own cause with her, but to 
give her such vague hints as he felt that he dared to ex- 
press against her wooer. 

Hour after hour, as the days flew by, he was compelled 
to see the little pleasure-boat, containing the woman he 
loved and her favored suitor, skimming over the clear 
bosom of the ocean ; hour after hour, as the time passed, 
he was compelled to see -them loitering together on the 
golden sands, she seeming as absorbed in the society of 
that hated rival as she had ever been in his own in the 
happy past at Silver Bend. 

In the jealous watch he maintained over them he lost 
his color and his flesh, and to a great extent his good 
nature, and he gained absolutely nothing which could be 
held in proof that the German was other than the titled 
gentleman of leisure he represented himself to be. 

So the weeks flew by, and at last the golden July was 
ushered in, and if Ray Sylvane gained nothing in Miss 
Vance’s favor, the Count von Hirschberg certainly did, for 
it came to be known about that time, that they had been 
formally betrothed, and that the marriage between them 
was set to take place early in October. 

One morning, as Ray was wandering moodily on the 
beach, Harker joined him, and linking his arm in that of 
the young gentleman, he said : 

“ Our bird is about to fly away.” 

“What do you mean ?” Sylvane asked, halting abruptly 
in his walk, and speaking sharply. 

“I mean that Von Hirschberg has settled his bill at the 
hotel, and that he has declared his intention of leaving the 
Headlands to-day. I understand, furthermore, that Colonel 
Vance has given up the little cottage, and that he and his 
daughter are also to go away to-day. Very likely Von 
Hirschberg means to accompany them.” 

Ray Sylvane’s face had taken a vivid color, and he began 


ELECTRA. 65 

to walk on again with deep wrinkles drawn on his fore- 
head. 

“Where did you get your information?” he asked, 
sharply. 

“ Partly from the clerk at our hotel, who receipted the 
count’s bill, and partly from a general rumor to that effect,” 
the detective answered. And then he added, in a tone of 
discontent: 

“ I was never more certain of any unproven thing than 
I am that the fellow is a cheat, but I have no means of 
3 ascertaining the fact. I am doubtful, however, about his 
being the man, Max Rosenfield, who disappeared from the 
t Astor House, because I can find no trace to connect him 
] with the girl, Wilhelmine Bachman, nor the stolen dia- 
. monds. I will leave him for awhile, and turn my attention 
to finding the missing girl. It is the diamonds, after all, that 
1 I am in search of, and not the antecedents of Von Hirsch- 
3 berg.” 

f And I am concerned about the diamonds only so far as 

■ they may be connected with him,” Ray Sylvane said, 

5 fiercely, “and if you abandon your espionage over him I 
[ shall not do so. I will follow him wherever h£ goes— if 
} he goes with her.” 

He made a motion with his hand toward the lofty head- 
t land near which was situated the cottage in which Kate 
1 Vance sojourned, and Harker knew that he alluded to her. 
j “The justice or wrong of the suspicion against him will 
j be proven when the girl, Wilhelmine Bachman is discov- 
ered,” he said, convincingly. 

; For a few minutes they walked on in silence, and then 
i he exclaimed: 

' “ An idea suggests itself to me — I will insert a notice in 

■ The Daily Advertiser , which is the medium by which the 
t working classes make their wants known generally, ad- 

id ressed to Wilhelmine Bachman, and stating that the per- 
; son she regarded as her lover is about to marry a lady at 
’ iSilver Bend in Kentucky. It may reach her eyes, but it 
will hardly fall under the notice of Miss Vance or any of 
her friends, and if the Bachman girl is like most of her sex, 
it will be a notice that will rouse her to manifest herself at 
Silver Bend. It is at any rate worth the trial.” 

“Yes, it is worth the trial,” Ray Sylvane responded, 
gloomily, but with the look in his face as of one who saw a 
battle from afar, and was eager for the fray. “ You may 
pursue your own course,” he went on, digging his heels 
fiercely into the yielding sand at every step, “but I shall 
pursue Count Von Hirschberg.” 

As he spoke, he turned toward the hotel, and Harker 


66 


ELECTRA. 


kept pace with his rapid movements, and so returned to 
the house with him. 

Ray Sylvane, having ascertained for himself that the 
German had really declared his intention of leaving the 
village that day on the steamer Swan, which was due at 
that point, also paid off his own bill, and packed his valise 
to be ready also for departure at a moment's notice. 

“ If he goes with her, I shall go also,” he muttered to 
himself, and he kept his word. 

At twilight the Swan came steaming into the port, and 
among the passengers it took on board at the Headlands, 
were Colonel Vance and Kate, and by her side was Count 
von Hirschberg, and following not far behind them was 
Ray Sylvane. 

“I will watch over her. I will save her from him if 
human power can avail to do so,” he told himself, and 
there settled in his mind a strong conviction that he would 
do so. 

The Swan went swimming out on the broad ocean under 
the gleaming stars, and from his position on the guards 
Ray Sylvane watched Kate Vance and Count von Hirsch- 
berg, who were sitting and talking together not a dozen 
steps from him, and both of whom seemed utterly oblivi- 
ous, or unmindful, of his proximity. 

Ray Sylvane set his teeth hard together as he watched 
them. 

He felt that it would be a blessed privilege to be per- 
mitted to punch the hay-colored head of the German as he 
bent over her in the dim light, and an insane idea of doing 
so presented itself to his mind. 

He could not endure the sight much longer, he thought, 
and as they had devined the thought, they arose after 
awhile, and went away into the cabin, and Ray Sylvane 
remained alone with his bitter thoughts. 

“ How should he proceed?” 

For the thousandth time he was putting the question 
to himself, walking moodily up and down on the deck, with 
his eyes downcast. 

Lifting his head after awhile, and glancing upward, he 
started, and the sudden throbbing of his heart almost 
smothered him, as he saw,- standing and leaning listlessly 
against one of the great posts of the boat, Kate Vance. 

Without a moment’s consideration, he went forward and 
laid his hand upon her arm. 

“Kate, I must speak to you, and you must listen,” he 
said sternly. 


ELECTRA. 


67 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE DIAMOND RING. 

A feeling of restlessness had come over Kate Yance, 
and had induced her to excuse herself from any longer en- 
tertaining Von Hirschberg, on the plea that her heart was 
aching wretchedly. But instead of retiring to her state- 
room, as she had intimated an intention of doing, she had 
gone out instead on the guards, in order that the cool, re- 
freshing breeze might blow on her temples, which were, in 
truth, throbbing painfully. 

The feeling of restlessness had been occasioned, as she 
knew — but why she did not know— by the sight of Ray 
Sylvane on the ship. 

His proximity always disturbed whatever transient 
calmhess was over her spirit, just as the breath of the 
storm agitates a glassy lake. 

When she had at first caught a glimpse of him on the 
guards in the serene starlight, she had not by word or 
sign intimated that she had done so ; yet her heart began 
to beat tumultuously, and the blood to run riot in her 
veins. 

Why had he power to affect her thus? 

She never put the question to herself, she never sought 
to analyze that effect, to trace it to its source, in order to 
see from what passion or impulse it came. She only told 
herself over and over again that she hated him, and that 
she meant to convince him how speedily she could console 
herself for the loss of his homage, by accepting that of 
another man. 

And that other man chanced to be presented to her in 
the person of Count Yon Hirschberg. 

When she went out on the guards again, after excusing 
herself to the German, she did not see Ray Sylvane ,who 
was, indeed, hidden from her sight at the moment, by some 
intervening obstacle, and she thought he had gone below; 
so his unexpected touch on her arm, and the unexpected 
sound of his voice in her ear, startled her so that as she 
turned quickly and saw him standing there, she uttered 
a smothered exclamation. 

In an instant she wrenched her arm from his clasp, and 
recoiled from him, saying with fiery indignation: 

“ How can you have the audacity, sir, to approach me, 
to speak to me, much less, to lay the weight of your finger- 
tips even upon me?” 

Her wrath did not abash him. He was determined not 
to be driven away from her this time unheard, so he said, 
speaking rapidly : 

‘ ‘ I am only to be permitted to speak to you for five 


68 


ELECTRA. 


minutes. Surely I have the right to do that in consider- 
tion of the great love I have felt for you so long.” 

She lifted her fine form up until she looked like a tragic 
queen in the soft light, and laughed mockingly. 

‘ ‘ I know that you consider me a traitor to you,” he went 
on rapidly, “ that you will hear no explanation of the con- 
duct which you consider was a deadly insult to you. But 
I tell you, Kate Vance, that the time will come when you 
will listen to that explanation from other lips than mine, 
and I will stand exonerated of any willful wrong toward 
you. I am content to hold myself in patience until that 
time comes, which I feel will not be long, and I implore 
you to wait also, not to put an impassable barrier between 
you and me until that time comes!” 

There was something agonizing in the pleading of his 
low voice, and it may have touched her for a moment, for 
her haughty head was bent as if with a passing emotion. 
But it was only for a moment that she yielded to it. The 
next instant she had lifted it again, and was standing 
proudly erect in the starlight there before him. 

“Bay Sylvane,” she said, and her clear voice vibrated 
with strong feeling, “ the past in which you mingled, in 
which you humiliated me so bitterly, is as dead to me as if 
it had never been. You are no more to me than the skeli- 
ton which may be lying under our feet at the bottom of 
the sea this moment. I beg to assure you that it gives me 
no sorrow— not one throb— to think of you thus. I beg to 
assure you that you have not been able to put a lasting 
pain into my life, as you may suppose in your vanity that 
you have done. In proof of the fact, I will, in less than 
three months’ time, be the wife of another man — a man 
whom I have no fear will attempt to deceive me!” 

She seemed to feel a sort of mad joy in telling him this, 
and she threw back her regal head, and her bosom rose and 
fell as she did it. 

Ray Sylvane drew nearer to her, and grasped her arm, 
and so held her firmly as he said hoarsely. 

“ 1 have fear that he will deceive you, then. Mark my 
words, if you persist in marrying him, greater humiliation 
will fall upon you than came to you from me!” 

He had spoken with such deep intensity of feeling that 
she was impressed by it. X A chill ran over her, like that 
which comes from an idea of impending calamity. 

She unclosed her lips to ask him what he meant, but a 
sudden revulsion of feeling came over her, and she lifted 
her right hand, her left arm being in his grasp, and made 
a gesture as if she were driving him from her. 

“Release my arm, Ray Sylvane!” she said, indignantly, 
“and never dare to lay your polluting touch upon me 


ELECTRA. 


again. Release me, I say, or I will scream out for protec- 
tion.” 

“There is no need for you to do that,” he said, coldly, 
stepping a few paces back from her. “I. was not even 
conscious that I had touched you. I will not offend you 
in that way again. I only meant to warn you, as much 
for your own sake— because you have been so much to me 
in the past — as for my own.” 

His voice softened, and quivered into husky indistinct- 
ness, and again it seemed to touch and to soften her. 

She turned her face from him, and spoke with her eyes 
bent on the reflection of a particularly bright star in the 
water : 

“ Whatever your motive was, see to it that it does not 
move you to approach me again. A gulf has come between 
us that can never be bridged over. An insult has been 
offered me by you which not all the waters in the ocean 
could wash out. I care nothing for it now,” she went on, 

' her voice hardening again into that clear, metallic ring, 
and turning her head so that the glance of her flashing 
eyes came upon him in the dim light, “I rejoice at it, 
i since it has freed me from you, and has thrown my life’s 
happiness into the hands of Count von Hirschberg !” 

Again she seemed to derive a sort of mad delight from 
flinging that assertion at him, and a groan broke from him 
as he heard it. 

“Kate, Kate?” he cried, impetuously, reaching his 
clasped hands in a supplicatory way toward her, “cast 
me off if you will, hate and despise me if you will, but 
don’t marry the man calling himself the Count von Hirsch- 
berg. I distrust him — for your sake I fear him. Don’t 
wreck your hope of happiness by marrying him. He is 
not worthy of you.” 

“ Perhaps you considered yourself unworthy of me, and 
that was the reason you jilted me at the last moment !” 
she said, with a harsh, grating laugh; and then she added, 
fiercely, sending the words through her teeth, “Whatever 
; else Count von Hirschberg may be unworthy of, he is cer- 
tainly incapable, I think, of doing such a dastardly act as 
that ! For that reason, if for no other, I am glad that fate 
has given me to him instead of to you. I am glad that the 
wedding set to take place between us on the tenth of April 
was frustrated by you, and I am glad to know that the 
wedding set to take place on the fourth of October next 
► will be entirely out of your power to prevent 1” 

Saying that, passionately, she turned and walked swiftly 
j away, leaving him to stare alone at the cold reflections 
! of the stars in the water through which the boat was mov- 
ing. 


70 


ELECTRA. 


“Don’t be too sure that it will be out of my power to 
prevent that marriage,” he muttered, indistinctly. “I 
shall certainly try to prevent it; and something tells me 
that I shall succeed.” 

Then he fell to counting on his fingers how many days 
intervened between that hour and the fourth of October. 

He turned after a few minutes to resume his restless 
pacing up and down on the deck, which had been inter- 
rupted by the appearance of Miss Vance on the guards. 

He had only taken a step, however, when he halted 
abruptly. 

His downcast eyes had been caught by a glittering speck 
at his feet, which looked as if it had been a grain of dust 
fallen from some one of the myriad stars overhead. 

He stooped and picked it up, and then he discovered that 
it was a ring. 

He took a match from his pocket and struck it on the 
heel of his boot, and then, by the light of the blazing 
splinter, he examined the ring. 

As he did so, turning it about and about in his fingers, 
he uttered a sharp exclamation. 

There was the claw flattened into the shape of a small 
cross on the diamond solitaire, just as it had been describ- 
ed by the detective, Harker. 

The feeble light of the match revealed also an unusual 
flush on Ray Syl vane’s face, and an unusual flash in his 
eyes. 

The splinter burned down to his fingers, and he dropped 
it on the floor and set his foot upon it, in order that it 
might be thoroughly extinguished. 

“With this ring I will set my foot, perhaps, on Count 
Von Hirschberg!” he muttered. “With this ring I will, 
perhaps, render him powerless to ruin the life of Kate 
Vance.” 

He thrust the treasure-trove deep into his pocket, and 
went into the boat with the consciousness of power in him- 
self which he had not known for many a day. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

BAFFLED. 

Ray Sylvane found it impossible to sleep that night, his 
mind was in such a world of conjecture. 

The central idea around which all the others revolved 
however, was that he had, as he believed, the stolen ring of 
Mrs. Dulany of New York city in his possession. 

He believed, furthermore, from the spot on which he had 
found it, and which was the exact place where Kate Vance 


ELECTRA. 71 

i had been standing in the starlight, that it had fallen from 
her finger. 

“ Her fingers are small and this ring is large for a lady,” 
he said, turning it around and around on his own finger, 
i where lie had concluded to place it for safety. “To-morrow 
morning I will ask her about it, and if she acknowledges 
j that the German gave it to her, I will tell her the history 
. of if, as I believe, and also the suspicion attaching to him.” 

The night dragged itself slowly away, and slowly the 
1 gray dawn crept over the vessel, moving on its trackless 
way like a great bird. 

In the fever of impatience that was over him, Ray Syl- 
t vane welcomed that pallid light as he had never welcomed 
any other day break, and he arose. and made his toilet, and 
t went out on the deck. 

None of the passengers, of whom there were about a 
} ! score, were abroad as yet, and he watched the brightening 
r of the day alone. 

“ She will be likely to come out to watch the sunrise on 
the ocean,” he said to himself, and so tried to hold him- 
self in patience until she should appear. 

1 i He was burning with anxiety to show her the ring — to 
. tell her the suspicion attaching to Von Hirschberg. 

“ She will cast him off, then,” he went on muttering to 
j himself, “as she would a disgusting reptile. She is so 
, proud, and so honorable in all her dealings.” 

There was a faint reddening where the edges of the sea 
j, and sky met in the east, as it were the flush of wine, which 
j heralded the coming of the sun, and as Ray Sylvane no- 
ticed it, he glanced around again, in quest of Miss Vance, 

[. whom he felt would appear. 

The presentiment did not deceive him, for there she was, 

1 passing slowly on to the opposite side of the vessel, but 
halting at a point which commanded a view of the sunrise. 

I She had not perceived him, the glance of her clear blue 
. eyes had wandered past him without noticing him, and 
were fixed on the sunrise flush which gave the sea and sky 
where they met a soft rosiness, like the blush which is 
awakened by the first kiss of love. 

| Ray Sylvane noticed that her beautiful face was unusu- 
ally pale, and that it wore a tired look, as if she had not 
slept well. 

He approached her, and spoke her name softly, his heart 
i being touched by the sight of that weary look about her 
inouth, and those dark circles under her eyes, 
j She started at the sound of his voice, and lifted her hand, 
and rested it flutteringly over her heart. 

“When I parted from you last night, it was with the 
understand ng that you should never speak to me again,” 


72 


ELECTRA. 


she said, -her face flushed, and a deep frown plowed like 
two furrows between her eyes. “ Why do you intrude on 
me again?” , 

“I intrude on you,” he said, speaking calmly, confident- 
ly, while a singular thrill of exultation ran through his 
voice. ‘ ‘ I intrude on you in order to return this ring to 
you which I suspect is your property, or rather, it is an 
article which I fancy you lost.” 1 

He held the ring toward her as he spoke, and she glanced 
at it, and answered coldly : 

“I did drop it— but it is not my property.” 

“ Will you be kind enough to tell me whose property you 
suppose it is ?” he asked— and there was so much of insinu- 
ation in his voice that she said quickly, letting the hand 
which she was extending to take the ring fall at her side. 

“ Is it yours? If it is, keep it and welcome. I set up no 1 
claim to it.” 

The sharply uttered words surprised him; he could not j 
comprehend their meaning. J 

“It was not I who gave it to you,” he said, “ then why 
should you suppose that I should claim it?” 

“ I don’t know to whom it belongs,” she responded, with 
an impatient shrug of her shoulders. I only know that it 
is not mine.” I 

At that moment they were joined by Count Von Hirsch- 
berg, who spoke to Kate, without in any way noticing the 
presence of Ray Sylvane. 

“You rise early — you are so industrious dat you haf 
beat the sun.” 

Kate responded with a little laugh which was nervous 
and unnatural in its sound. 

“ You German’s are noted for being sluggish,” she com- 
menced, but Ray Sylvane interrupted her light flow of 
words, by saying in a suppressed tone, as if by a heavy 
strain on his anger he kept it from breaking bounds. 

“ Will you be kind enough to give me your attention, 
Miss Vance, until we get through with the little matter we 
were discussing? Will you be kind enough to step aside 
with me where our conversation may be unheard by any, 
one but ourselves?” 

He darted a quick, withering glance at the German, and 
met that person’s greenish eyes, which seemed to be taking 
aim at him over Miss Vance’s shoulder. 

“ It is not necessary,” she responded, seeming to take a 
sort of mad delight in saying it. “ I have no secrets from 
Count Von Hirschberg. Whatever you have to say to me, 
you may say before him.” • 

The color came and went, while she had been speaking, 
in quick dashes on his face, and when she ended, he ex- 


ELECTRA. 


73 


claimed, holding the ring out between his unsteady finger 
! and thumb so that the setting was plainly presented to the 
view of the greenish eyes of the German. 

“Then what I have to say is, where did you get this 
ring?” 

As he asked the question, he fixed a penetrating look, 
not upon her face, but on that of Count Von Hirschberg, 
because he felt that it was a test which would try him 
severely. 

He saw the greenish eyes of the German turned on the 
ring for a moment, and then they were lifted, and were 
directed in a swift glance toward his own face. 

What was the passing expression in those bold eyes? It 
was a singular one, and it baffled Ray Sylvane to interpret 
I it. 

Miss Vance spoke in a voice of passionate disdain. 

“ Do you lay any claim to the ring?” she asked. 

“I most certainly do not!” he said, his face flushing 
\ with fiery anger, not against her, but against Von Hirsch- 
f berg, who he felt, rather than saw, was regarding him in- 
solently. 

“Then, as it dropped from my finger last night, I will 
trouble you to give~it back to me, or to Count Von Hirsch- 
! berg,” she added, with a sudden impulsiveness of a quick 
I idea, and she swerved aside in order that she might not 
stand between them. 

“And I decline to give it to him,” Ray retorted, hotly. 

‘ ‘ Since you decline to take it from my hand, I will place 
it where I found it, on the floor here.” 

He dropped it from his fingers as he spoke, encountering 
a momentary glance of triumph from the greenish eyes of 
the German as he did so, for which he could have throttled 
him on the spot. 

Von Hirschberg immediately stooped and picked it up, 
and gave it to Kate with some low words which Ray, as he 
turned away, filled with wrath and bitterness, did not 

llGcil* 

He went on into the ship and to his stateroom. 

“ It could have come into her possession in no way ex- 
cept through him,” he muttered, alluding to the German. 
“•I will write to Harker and tell him. Perhaps the detect- 
ive will find her less reticent on the subject.” 

He took some writing materials from his valise, and hur- 
riedly, and with a trembling hand, he wrote to the New 
York detective an account of the ring, and suggested that 
he should come immediately to the village of Silverdale in 
Kentucky. . . . , , 

“I am convinced that your suspicions in regard to the 
fellow are correct,” he wrote. “ Lose no time in tracing 


74 


ELECTRA. 


up the clew, for unless there are two rings of the land you 
described to me, the one stolen from Mrs. Dulany is now 
in the possession of Miss Vance, and I am sure it was given 
to her by the man calling himself Count Von Hirschberg^ 
This he sealed and addressed to Harker, and as he 
glued the postage stamp on it he muttered : 

“ We shall see whether there will be a wedding at Silver 
Bend on the fourth of October. We shall !— we shall see f ’ 


CHAPTER XXII. 

AN EAVESDROPPER. 

It was an evening in August, and the sun was hanging J 
low over the western hill which skirted the village of Sil- 
verdale. 

Slowly along the bank of the shining river two men were j 
walking and talking earnestly together. 

Up and down a narrow green space in front of a clump 
of swamp willows they were passing, traversing back and 
forth a distance of not more than twenty yards, their 
progress being limited to that by huge embankments of 
rocks on either side. 

Concealed in that thick clump of willows, some one was 
listening eagerly to their conversation. 

That unsuspected eavesdropper was Electra Dean, who 
had crept up, and hidden herself there unseen by either of ■ 
the two men. 

Those two men were Ray Sylvane and the detective : 
Harker. 

The willow thicket in which Electra Dean was hidden 
was about midway the space over which they were pacing, j 
and they were never far distant from her in their slow 
walk to and fro, consequently much of their conversation 
fell distinctly on her ears. 

“ So you haven’t seen Miss Vance to speak to her since j 
you showed her the ring that morning on the ship?” Harker ; 
said interrogatively, his clear gray eyes staring straight 
before him. 

“ No,” Ray responded, “ she has given nie no opportunity 
to do so, or I think I should have been tempted to have told 
her our suspicions in regard to the ring. You don’t know 
how difficult it is,” he went on, grinding his heels into the 
tender grass, while the furrows deepened on his forehead, 

“ to remain inactive, as I have done in the last two weeks 
while that fellow, whom I have every reason to believe is a 
thief, is received as a favored suitor by the woman who 
should be my wife at this present time, if fortune dealt 
fairly by me.” 

“ i don’t question that fact,”~the detective responded, in- 


ELECTRA. 


75 


differently. “ But you should proceed very cautiously in 
a matter of this kind. He should have no intimation — nor 
should she — that you believe the ring she now wears was 
stolen by him, until there is some proof to bring in sub- 
stantiation of your suspicion. If you had told her in a 
straightforward way that the ring had been stolen from 
Mrs. Dulany, at the Astor House, in New York, and that 
you had reason to believe the man who gave it to her, and 
who, of course, was Von Hirscbberg, was the thief, she 
wouldn’t have believed you, but would have considered 
that the whole story had been due entirely to your jealousy 
of Von Hirscbberg, and had been invented solely for the 

E urpose of breaking off her marriage with him. So it is 
etter, if you want to interfere with that marriage, 
that you should keep quiet, and let me manage the 
matter.” 

To this speech, which was an unusually long one for 
Harker to make, Ray listened impatiently. 

“ But you are so deliberate,” he said, “ while I am burn- 
ing with anxiety lest the fourth of October should roll 
around before sufficient proof has been gathered to con- 
vict Von Hirschberg as a fraud. You don’t know what a 
terrible fear besets me that she may marry him ! For her 
own sake I would rather see her dead and shrouded in her 
coffin — I would rather die myself— oh ! a thousand times 
over, if possible — than to know she was his wife!” 

His voice trembled with the strength of feeling that was 
over him at the moment, and as she heard, Electra Dean 
set her small teeth together to suppress a passionate cry 
that seemed to be rising in her throat. 

“All I’ve got to say to you ,” Harker responded, in his 
cold, even tones, in which there never, by any chance, came 
a ripple of .feeling— “ all I’ve got to say to you, is to be 
quiet, and to leave me to deal with Von Hirschberg. I am 
going out to Silver Bend after tea this evening, and I am 
going to ask for the old gentleman— Colonel Vance.” 

In expressing his determination, the detective had taken 
his hand from Ray’s arm, and he kept time with his Words 
—or rather, ’he emphasized them with taps of his fingers on 
his left palm. 

“I am going to tell old Colonel Vance,” he went on, 
“ that I have some business with Von Hirschberg that con- 
cerns him and his daughter equally with the German, and 
I will ask to see them all three together. 

He paused so long after making that announcement, that 
Ray grew exasperated. 

“Well, what do you propose to do then ?” he asked, im- 
patiently. 

“ I propose, then, to ask to look at the ring on Miss 


76 


ELECTRA. 


Vance’s finger— if it is on her finger— and I propose, then, 
to read her a description of Mrs. Dulany’s stolen ring, 
written by Mrs. Dulany’s own hand. And I propose then, 
right in the presence of Von Hirschberg, to ask her how 
the ring came into her possession.” 

“And so cover him with confusion, and take him so by 
surprise that he will not have presence of mind to vindi- 
cate himself, but will stand convicted in her sight, of a 
crime which will make her ashamed to remember that she 
ever thought of marrying him!” Kay said, his voice and 
his whole being shaken with the contemplation of those 
possible results. 

The detective nodded his round head and his square face 
on his short neck, and the two walked on in silence for 
about five minutes. 

Harker was the first to speak again : 

“I put in the advertisement I told you of, for Wilhel- 
mine Bachman two weeks ago, but have as yet heard noth- 
ing of her. It may be that she is dead, or has left the 
country. She would be the only person, I think, to clear 
up the mystery of Count von Hirschberg, with a glance. 
Because if he is Max; Rosenfield, she would detect it, I 
fancy, let him disguise himself as he would.” 

Those last words were lost to Electra Dean, because the 
two men had left the green plat over which they had been 
sauntering, and were passing now through the gathering 
gloom, for twilight had fallen, toward the Red Star, the 
early lights of which, were already agleam in the small 
windows. 

“ You want to prevent the marriage of Kate Vance, do 
you?” Electra Dean muttered, creeping from her cover, and 
staring at the forms passing like moving shadows now to- 
ward the village tavern. “But you won’t do it if I can help 
it! If the man she is going to marry is a thief as they think 
he is, why the more I want her to marry him, the proud 
jade ! That cut of her whip on my shoulder seems to sting 
me yet, whenever I think of it. I am going to see Count 
von Hirschberg, as they call him, and I am going to let 
him into the secret of the plot those, two have hatched 
against him. I am going to let him know what they are 
up to. I am going to put him on his guard !” 

She said that in a fierce, determined way, and she ac- 
companied the words with jerks of the head, which made 
her short curls quiver, and she started away in the deepen- 
ing darkness, with a swiftness of foot which soon bore her 
out of sight over the hill ; and never pausing for an in- 
stant, she went on toward Silver Bend, and crouched in 
the shadow of the great pine-trees on the avenue, waiting 
to see if, perchance, “the man who was to marry Miss 


ELECTRA. 


77 


Vance,” as he was called in the village, should pass that 
way alone. 

Fortune favored her, for she had not waited over a half 
hour when he came sauntering down the walk smoking 
his after-supper cigar. 

He started, and stared with surprise when Electra sud- 
deny appeared before him, as unexpectedly as if she had 
fallen from the sky, saying : 

Let me speak to you, sir, for a few minutes. I want 
to tell you something that you will be glad to know of.” 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

DISAPPOINTMENT. 

Drawing Von Hirschberg back into the deep shadow of 
the trees with an involuntary touch of her finger on his 
arm, Electra Dean talked to him for several minutes in a 
rapid, earnest way, which held his attention, but elicited 
I no word from him. 

With his head bent so that he could peer down into her 
face by the light which a stray moonbeam, sifting through 

I the somber boughs overhead, marked on it, he listened to 
all she said. 

It was simply a verbatim report of the conversation she 
had heard from the two men on the river bank. 

| At its conclusion the German gave his hay-colored head 
j a toss that came near dislodging his broad-brimmed hat, 
j and said : 

“ What you haf told me does not concern me. If you 
? think so, you mistake.” 

He did not thank her for either her information, or the 
; motive which had moved her to give it to • him — at least, if 
I he felt any gratitpde, he did not express it in words. 

He turned abruptly away,' and went out into the broad 
avenue, and continued his walk down it, while he puffed 
clouds of smoke from his cigar. 

Electra also went away, passing on like a dark shadow 
amid shadows, and going swiftly to the little cottage in 
the ravine. 

“Bah,” she ejaculated to herself, commenting on the 
German, “ he is a dog compared to Ray Sylvane !” 

Von Hirschberg continued to stroll about over the 
grounds until his cigar was burned to a shortness that was 
dangerous to the continued existence of his long mustache. 

As he threw the stump away, he saw some one coming 
up the avenue whom he recognized as Harker— with whose 
persanal appearance he was perfectly familiar, having 
boarded in the same hotel with him at the Headlands. 
Seeing him coming up the walk, he stepped aside into 


78 


ELECTS A. 


the shadow of the trees, and watched him while he ap- 
proached the house and rang the bell, and a minute after- 
ward disappeared through the door which a negro man 
opened. , . . _ - 

Then Von Hirschberg, inflating his chest with a deep 
breath, and throwing back his- head, went also to the 
house, and entered the parlor, from which the notes of a 
piano were stealing, awakened by the practiced fingers of 
Miss Vance. 

He drew up a chair, and took a seat beside her, his eyes 
falling on the magnificent diamond that glittered on her 
left hand, in company with another ring, which was only 
a broad plain circlet oc gold. 

“Your music draws me to you,” he said, “just as your 
beauty does, only not so strongly. You have made me 
happy by saying dat you will marry me, but you haf never 
said dat you love me.” 

He bent nearer to her, with a languishing look in his 
greenish eyes, as if he would read her soul in her own, but 
she lowered the lids over them, and turned her face away 
with a sickly whiteness creeping over it. 

He reached his hand out and touched hers, which was 
fingering the keys near him, and at that instant her father, 
followed by Harker, entered the room. 

Colonel Vance wore a flushed and nervous look, and in a 
very nervous way he introduced Harker to Kate, and then 
to Von Hirschberg. 

In the same nervous way he proffered a chair to the de- 
tective, and took one himself. 

“Kate, this gentleman, Mr. Harker, has a communica- 
tion to make to you,” he said, speaking in his usual stern 
way, but with his pale blue eyes fixed on the face of Von 
Hirschberg. “He has told me something in regard to 
that ring on your finger that astonishes me greatly. I 
know nothing, as I have told him, about the article, be- 
cause I knew nothing about it, and you have never told 
me anything of it.” 

A hot flush came in the face of Kate Vance, overspread- 
ing the pallor which had rested on it a few minutes 
before. 

His words had recalled vividly to her mind the scene on 
the ship when Ray Sylvanehad questioned her in the early 
morning about that same ring. 

She lifted her hand, which trembled visibly, and looked 
down at the glittering jewel that shone in the lamplight 
like a spark of fire. 

Von Hirschberg looked at her, and Colonel Vance, and 
the detective looked at Von Hirschberg. 

“What do you w r ant to know about the ring?” Kate 


ELECTRA. 


79 


asked, haughtily, after a minute, glancing around at the 
detective. 

“ I simply desire to know, miss, where you obtained it?” 
Harker answered, in his sharp, curt tones. 

“I presume you have a good reason to give for your in- 
quisitiveness,” she said, speaking always haughtily. 

For reply the detective drew a note-book from his coat 
pocket, and opened it, and made a motion to hand it to 
her; bub he seemed instantly to change his mind, for in- 
stead of giving the book into her hand, he retained it in 
his own, which he dropped on his knee. 

‘ ‘ I have a good reason for wanting to know from whom 
you obtained it, and I can explain it better when you have 
answered the question. I assure you that I do not mean 
to be in any way impertinent or disrespectful to you, but 
I beg that you will tell me the name of the person who 
gave you that diamond ring.” 

Notwithstanding his assurance that he did not mean to 
be impertinent, Kate Vance was filled with fiery indigna- 
tion. 

She unclosed her lips to utter a disdainful refusal of his 
request, but her father, for whom she entertained the most 
profound respect, spoke. 

“ Mr. Harker has been explaining to me, Kate, and if I 
had not considered that he had the right to ask the ques- 
tion of you, I would not have brought him here to do it. 
I request you to answer it. As I said before, I have not 
noticed the ring, nor has my attention ever been called to 
it, but I ask you to tell me where you got it?” 

Von Hirschberg’s eyes were fixed intently on her face as 
she answered, turning the ring nervously about on her fin- 
ger. 

“ I picked it up on the beach at the Headlands the even- 
ing we left there. Just as I was stepping into the small 
boat which was to convey us to the ship, I dropped my 
fan ; as I stooped to pick it up, I saw this ring lying beside 
it, half hidden in the sand. I did not speak to my father 
about it, because that evening, and during the entire trip, 
he was confined to his stateroom with severe indisposition. 
Since then I have not thought of it.” 

That was all. In a straightforward way she told it, with 
every clearly uttered word bearing the stamp of truth. 

A blank look came into the face of the detective, and an 
unmistakably triumphant one in the thin visage of the 
German, who pulled at the ends of his long mustache, and 
laughed through his teeth. 

“ I am sorry you know so little about it,” Harker said, 
recovering his sang-froid instantly, and lifting the little 
book from his knee to refer to it. 


80 


ELECTRA. 


“ I will read you the description of a ring that was lost, 
with other valuable jewels, by a lady at the Astor House 
in New York, and you can tell better than I, since I have 
not examined it, whether the ring you found accords with 
this that was lost.” 

Then he began and read slowly item by item the very 
minute description, even to the small monogram, “A. D.” 
engraved amid the carving of the gold; and Kate Yance 
took the ring from her finger, and examined it closely as he 
read. 

“The description accords perfectly,” she said, coldly, 
“and so I give it over to you. I know nothing more about 
it than I have told you.” * 

The detective took the ring. 

“ It was stolen,” he said, “ and I have been employed to 
track down the thief. I am in search of an important 
witness, whom I hope to be able to produce in a short time. 
I am in hourly expectation of finding that witness.” 

As a final probe, he thrust that remark into the ears es- 
pecially of Von Hirschberg, and he keenly watched its 
effect upon him. 

Was it fancy, or did his tawny face really grow a shade 
whiter? And was the involuntary movement he made one 
of shrinking, as if he had seen a threatening hand sudden- 
ly uplifted to strike him? 

He had certainly changed color, and he had as certainly 
made a nervous movement, but whether it was occasioned 
by conscious guilt and fear of discovery, the detective 
could not determine. 

Harker apologized for his necessary intrusion, and 
bowed himself out. 

“The trail grows warm,” he muttered to himself as he 
went down the walk in the moonlight. “ And it seems to 
be tending toward Count von Hirschberg. I will follow 
it up, and see if it reaches him?” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

WILHELMINE BACHMAN. 

The day following the detective’s visit to Silver Bend, 
Von Hirschberg left the neighborhood. 

He had some matters of business to attend to, he said, in 
explanation of his departure, which would occupy his at- 
tention for some weeks, and it might not be possible for 
him to return to Silver Bend, until the day appointed for 
his marriage. 

Ray Sylvane remained at the Red Star, filled with a con- 
stantly growing fever of anxiety. 

The time passed to him as if its figurative wings were en- 


ELECTRA. 81 

dowed with more than double their usual speed, bringing 
nearer and nearer the fourth of October. 

And day by day, as his chances for a reconciliation with 
Kate— a hope to w^hich he tenaciously clung — diminished, 
the dearer she became to him. 

During that time he had not caught even a glimpse of 
Electra Dean; but in his growing despair, his thoughts 
turned to her, and he determined to make one last desper- 
ate attempt to see her, and to try once more to induce her 
to make the confession which he felt sure would bring for- 
giveness to him from the woman he loved. 

The days had glided on now into September. 

The reports he had received from Darker were discour- 
aging. He had shown the ring to Mrs. Dulany, and she 
had recognized it a^ belonging to the set of jewels she had 
lost, but further than that he had made no discovery. 
The notice to the missing Wilhelmine Bachman had been 
fruitless to discover her. 

It was late in the afternoon. The day had been so in- 
tensely warm, that every breath of air floating through 
the garish sunshine seemed like the dry atmosphere from 
a hot oven. 

Ray Sylvane had been all day long suffering with a 
dreadful attack of headache, and had been for hours in 
his room. 

But the pain in his head was so aggravated by the pain- 
ful thought that surged continually through his fevered 
brain that he felt further inaction would render him 
mad, so he arose and bathed his face, resolved to go that 
evening again to Electra Dean and try to make terms with 
her in some way to bring peace between himself and Kate. 

He did not notice that the atmosphere had grown cooler, 
and he heard, without noticing it, the sound of the wind 
stirring against his window. So when he went out into 
the air, he was surprised to see that a storm was gather- 
ing, and that portentous clouds obscured the declining 
sun 

He stood irresolutely. He could not reach the cabin of 
Granny Dean before those clouds would break, letting 
down their pent up waters. 

“ Heaven and earth seem to be combined to defeat me!” 
he muttered. 

At that moment the signal whistle of the regular packet 
due there that day, broke startlingly on the rising wind. 

Turning his eyes in the direction of the sound, he saw 
the coming boat with two columns of black smoke rising 
from its chimneys. 

A strange presentiment came over him that that steamer 
would bring something of importance to him. He did not 


82 


ELECTRA. 


know what, but an idea flashed into his head that it would 
put off the detective, Harker. 

So impressed did he become with the fancy, that it took 
the shape of certainty in his mind, and he went down to 
the landing, and with a queer beating at the heart watched 
the packet as it steamed up to the shore. 

But in his expectation of seeing Harker he was disap 
pointed, for he did not appear. 

There was only one passenger waiting on the lower deck 
for the gang board to be put, and that was a woman, large 
and fair and having blue eyes. 

Ray Sylvane, glancing carelessly at her, was struck by a 
look of sadness on her round face which was touching in 
its blended expressions of sorrow and patience. 

The storm was rapidly approaching. The cloud, stretch- 
ing like the wings of a great bird on the sky, widened 
and darkened at every moment; and the strong wind 
sweeping up the river, tossed and furrowed the waters. 

As the blue-eyed woman, aided by the clerk of the boat, 
crossed the gang-board, the lightning played over her like 
a fiery serpent, and the thunder uttered a deafening roar, 
which the echoes in the neighboring hills caught up and 
bellowed back. 

“You had best make haste to the hotel yonder,” the 
clerk said, as he parted from the woman, and turned to re' j 
enter the boat, “ or the rain will catch you.” 

The woman saw the wisdom of the warning, and started 
hurriedly in the direction of the Red Star ; but she had 
only gone a few paces when the cloud broke and the rain 
descended in a perfect deluge. 

The woman quickened her pace into a run, and Ray Syl- 
vane ran after her, dexterously drawing off his coat, which 1 
he flung about her shoulders when he reached her, so as to 1 
protect her as much as possible from the driving rain. 

“ Allow me to assist you,” he said, taking her valise and \ 
keeping pace with her rapid steps. 

The rain-fall was so copious, however, that during the j 
few minutes they were exposed to its fury they were thor- j 
oughly drenched. 

Entering the hotel, Ray Sylvane conducted the woman 
to the parlor, and as he halted in the doorway, with the wa- j 
ter dripping from his garments, he said : 

“ If you wish to take a room here, I will attend to it for 
you, if you would like me to do it.” 

“Thank you,” the woman said, speaking in a rich, but 
melancholy voice. “ I shall be very much obliged to you. 

I expect to remain at this place for a few days, at least.” 

Ray Sylvane bowed, and made a movement to go, but \ 
halted again to ask : 


ELECTRA. 


83 


“ What name shall I have registered?” 

“ Wilhelmine Bachman, of New York.” 

As the soft rich voice uttered the name distinctly, a dark 
flush swept into Ray Sylvane’s face, and a tremor came to 
his limbs. 

Wilhelmine Bachman! 




This was the woman whom Harker confidently declared 
could explain whether or not the man styling himself the 
Count von Hirschberg was one and the same with the 
missing hotel waiter, and suspected thief, Max Rosenfield ! 

He approached her — in his eagerness he placed his hand 
on her arm, not noticing that she shrank modestly from 
his touch, and said : 

“ Tell me something. Do you know a German calling 
himself Count von Hirschberg?” 

“I know no one bearing that name,” she answered, 
quietly. 

“But, perhaps, you know him by some other name?” he 
said, still speaking eagerly. ‘ ‘ I doubt him. I want to 
know something : of him, for he is to be married to a 
particular friend of mine in a few weeks. To the woman I 
love, and who, I believe, loves me,” he went on with an 
uncontrollable burst of confidence. 

There were bands of pink and white on the large, sad 
face of the woman as she answered quietly, with her great 
blue eyes looking truthfully into his : 

“I came here to find out whether I know that man. 
When I see him, I will tell you. Please see about getting 
me a room now, where I can change my wet garments, for 
I am drenched with the rain.” 

She drew up her plump shoulders, and a shiver ran over 
her full fine form as if she were struck by a chill. 

Ray Sylvane arose to do her bidding, but lingered to 


! say: 

j “The man, Von Hirschberg, is not here now, he has 
i gone away to attend to some business, I don’t know where, 
but he may return any day. He will be sure to return in 
time for his marriage with Miss Vance, which is to take 
place on the fourth of October.” 

“If he proves to be the person I am searching for, the 
marriage will not take place,” she said, with the pink lines 
deepening on her face, and a ring of power in her voice. 
“ I will wait until he returns, and when I see him I will 
know at a glance whether I will have power to interfere 
with and prevent that marriage. 


84 


ELECTRA. 
CHAPTER XXV. 




IN DEADLY PERIL. 

Never surely was there such a storm as that which 
roared over the village of Silverdale, all the night following 
the arrival of Wilhelmine Bachman at the Red Star tavern. 

The tiny streams which gave their silvery tribute con- 
stantly to the picturesque river, became great, mad tor- 
rents, rushing into the river and swelling it to such un- 
usual dimensions that it overran its banks as it had never 
done before, flooding the streets of Silverdale, which was 
situated on an eminence overlooking it. 

At her open window, Kate Vance stood in the early morn- 
ing. looking out at the drenched earth, and hearing, even 
from that distance the sullen roar of the river, which an 
intervening hill hid from her view. 

“I would like to see the river,” she said, turning to a 
negro woman who was arranging her room. “Go, Bell, 
and tell John to saddle White Foot for me. I think I will 
take a ride over the hill and see it.” 

The woman went out to do her bidding, and Miss Vance 
proceeded to don her riding habit, and then whip in hand, 
she went down to the veranda, in front of which a mulatto 
man was holding her brown horse, White Foot. 

“You’ll have to he careful about the branches, Miss 
Kate,” he said respectfully, as he assisted her into the sad- 
dle and gave the reins into her hand. “ I never saw Brush 
Creek as high as it is now. It washed away the old tobac- 
co barn last night.” 

“I’ll be careful not to drown myself or White Foot, 
John,” the young lady responded, as she touched the 
snirited horse with her whip, and went cantering away. 
“It wouldn’t be much matter though,” she muttered to 
herself, “ if I should be drowned. It might, perhaps, be a 
blessed thing for me. Seeing that I could hardly go to 
greater misery than I should leave by it.” 

Her face wore a look of suffering at the moment that 
was pitiful to see on a face so young and fair, and there 
was something very reckless in the way she went dashing 
down the avenue, and through the great gate at its extrem- 
ity. 

She turned into a bridle-path that ran around and up the 
hill, from the lofty summit of which she knew she could 
see the river, whose angry roar grew every moment more 
distinct. 

She reached the top in a little while, and caught her 
breath at the terrible grandeur of the view presented on all 
•ddes. 


ELECTRA . 


85 


There, looking down in the distance before her, she saw 
Silverdale, with its drenched houses and inundated streets, 
and in front of it the mad currents of the swollen river, on 
which great logs and stumps were being whirled help- 
lessly. 

For several minutes she sat motionless on the back of 
White Foot, fascinated by the terrible sight ; then she cast 
a wandering glance around. 

As she did so, she uttered a startled exclamation, and 
the bright color which exercise and excitement had brought 
into her face died out, and her blue eyes were distended 
with horror. 

There on her right, where the rocks of the ravine were 
usually visible far below, she saw a torrent whose great, 
yellow waves leaped and roared madly along. 

But the sight which had struck the color from her face 
was Granny Dean's cottage submerged almost to the top of 
the door in the wild waters that were plunging against, 
and threatening to bear it away on their mad bosom. 

Where was the old woman and her granddaughter ? 

Were they drowned? 

“My God!” Miss Yance muttered, as these questions 
rushed through her mind. “ The water rose in the night! 
Probably they were drowned while sleeping in their bed !” 

Something must be done. 

She wheeled her horse about, and bringing her whip 
sharply down on his neck, she dashed away, thinking to 
raise an alarm in the village. 

Her way led down the hill on the side opposite the terri- 
ble ravine, and, of course, hidden from it. 

At a turn in the tangled bridle path she came in sight of 
a gigantic figure walking hurriedly along, and at the sud- 
den and unexpected obstacle it presented in the narrow 
way, her horse shied, almost upsetting her. 

The man grasped the bit, and so steadied the animal. 

“ Oh, Barry Tempest, I am so glad to meet you!” Kate 
cried out, leaning her white face toward him over the 
pommel of her saddle. “ Granny Dean’s house is almost 
washed away, and I am afraid the old woman and Electra 
are drowned ! I want help for them !” 

The words had scarcely fallen from her lips, when Tem- 
pest’s hand dropped from its clutch on her bridle-bit, and 
his herculean form was climbing rapidly up the hill, and 
his swarthy face was as colorless as her own. 

She pursued her way to the village, which, owing to the 
narrow, slippery roadshe was compelled to traverse, was 
necessarily slow, and Barry Tempest went on impetuously 
toward the ravine, 


ELECTRA. 


It was really only a few minutes, and yet it seemed ages 
to him before he came in sight of that little house, and as 
he saw it, a groan broke from him. 

There it was, more than half submerged in the yellow 
waves, and trembling from the force with which they broke 
against it. 

Those maddened waters, for a distance of fifteen feet, 
roared between him and the little house which he believed, 
with a frenzy of despair coming over him, held the 
drowned body of the only woman he had ever loved — of 
the woman for whom he would willingly have died a thou- 
sand times, if it were possible. 

Without a moment of consideration, he threw off his 
coat, and plunged into the seething flood. 

Excitement gave him almost superhuman strength, and 
he swam as man never swam before, beating back with his 
arms the strong waters that uprooted saplings in their mad 
career as if they had been rye straws. 

They contended every inch with him, but he made his 
way steadily through them, and at last he grasped the 
upper lintel of the door and climbed on the roof, from 
which he began to wrench the shingles, all the time calling 
Electra’s name. 

He had no hope that her voice would respond to his 
agonized call ; he had no hope beyond the horrible one of 
seeing her dead body floating on the imprisoned water in 
the house when he had torn off the intervening shingles. 

He felt the log structure trembling under him as he 
worked, and knew that it threatened to fall to pieces at 
every blow of the floating timber which the waves hurled 
against it. 

Still he worked on, and in a minute’s time he had made 
an opening large enough to admit his head, and he bent 
and peered into the darkness below, calling : 

“Electra! Electra!” 

Then a hand was thrust up, which clutched his long 
black hair desperately, and the voice of Electra cried out, 
frantically : 

‘ ‘ Save us ! Save us !” 

“ I’ll do it, my girl, or I’ll die with you 1” he responded, 
with a great shout. 

And then he began to tear away the shingles again, in 
order that the narrow space might be widened sufficiently 
to admit of her body being dragged through it. 

She had crept up’into the crazy loft, and there being no 
light in it save that which penetrated through crevices in 
the broken shingles, he but dimly saw the form he drew 
up with difficulty through the opening he had made. 


ELECTBA. 87 

But when that form was trembling beside him on the 
roof, he uttered a malediction. 

It was not Electra, but her grandmother. 

He plunged his arms through the opening again. 

‘ ‘ Elnctra 1 Electra !” he cried, hoarsely ; and this time her 
arms were lifted to his, and in an instant she, too, was 
drawn out on the roof. 

“Save grandmother,” she said, cowering down, quiv- 
ering from head to foot, with her face hidden in her 
hands. 

“There is time to save only you?” Barry Tempest re- 
sponded hoarsely, twining his arms around her. “ In an- 
other minute the cabin will go to pieces!” 

She wrenched herself from him and cried out: 

“No — no! if grandmother dies, I will die 'with her. 
Save her, you will have time— and then come for me. I 
will cast myself into the water and drown before your 
eyes, if she is left here !” 

She was desperately in earnest ; and realizing it, Barry 
Tempest again reached out his arms to take her by 
force. 

“I swear I will not live if she is left to die!” Electra 
cried, fiercely, striking out at him so as to prevent his 
clasping her in his arms. “If you love me, Barry Tem- 
pest, save my grandmother !” 

At that appeal, Barry Tempest threw his left arm around 
the half-unconscious old woman, and sprung with her into 
the waves, leaving Electra on the roof of the cabin, that 
threatened, at every moment, to go to pieces. 

It was a terrible struggle, that fight against the waves, 
encumbered as he was by the terrified old woman, and 
nothing but superhuman strength could have enabled him 
to reach the land with her. 

The waves beat against him, and tossed him back and 
forth, but still he struggled on, feeling how terribly pre- 
cious every movement was if he would save the life of the 
woman he loved, who was clinging to the crazy roof, and 
watching him, and waiting for him to return for her. 

He reached the shore, and threw the form of the old 
woman beyond the reach of the water, and thgn he sprung 
into the flood again and made his way back again toward 
the cabin. 

But like the horrible changes of a nightmare dream, he 
saw the cabin suddenly go to pieces, and then he saw Elec- 
tra clinging to one of the floating logs against which she 
had been thrown. 

Barry Tempest uttered a terrible cry, and then he struck 
out again, swimming as man never swam before, and up- 
held by a strength which was superhuman, 


88 


ELECTRA. 


i 


For the first time in all his life of loneliness and neglect, j 
a prayer rose to his lips, and fell mutteringly from them : t 
“ Lord, let me save her!” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH. 

Barry Tempest saw Electra clinging desperately to the 
log which a minute before had held a position in the wall i 
of the cabin, but which was now being driven madly down 
the torrent. 

Would her frail hold upon it be broken, or would a 
merciful, pitying Providence permit her to maintain it until 
he could reach her? 

It was easier to keep himself afloat upon the downward, 
current than it was to breast it, as he had been forced to do ■ 
before. But then his hard struggle had been so far sue- • 
cessful that he had reached Electra, while now she swept 1 
on before him like an ignis fatuus , and the distance between j 
them seemed never to change. 

He saw her clinging always to the log, desperately, 
while the cruel waters strove mightily to wrench that un- 
certain support from her, and with powerful strokes of his j 
arms he assisted the current in propelling himself down- 
ward. 

He was gaining on Electra slowly but surely, and he j 
shouted to her again and again to have courage, to keep , 
fast hold on the log and that he would save her. 

He saw her face turned toward him, and her wild terri- ■ 
fled eyes fixed imploringly on him for an instant, while j 
she called out to him. 

But what her words were he did not hear, and the next , 
moment the log had entered a wliirpool and began a series 
of swift gyrations, the very first of which loosened her 
hold on the slippery surface, and as she uttered a piercing 
scream, the sharp end of the log struck her on the head, 
and she disappeared under the surface, leaving a crimson 
stain that for an instant was apparent on the muddy waters, 
and then was swept away. 

The chance which loosened her hold on the log, and the 
whirpool which detained her for a moment or so in its tur- j 
bulent breast, worked in Barry Tempest’s favor ; it enabled 
him to reach the spot just as she arose to the surface. 

He caught her in his arms, or rather in his left arm, for 
it required the active exertions of his right arm to keep 
them afloat, and naturally enough he did not notice how 
limp and dead she lay on his breast. 

“Don’t give way— I’ll save you,” he said, with his lips 
close to her ear, 


ELECTRA. 


Then began the nard fight with death, the same strug- 
gle he made with Granny Dean in his arms, he made now 
with Electra, only the struggle he made now was to save 
something dearer far than his own life, something, the loss 
of which would render his existence valueless. 

He was struggling to save the life of the woman he 
loved. 

Only a few feet separated him from the shore, but it was 
a distance filled with leaping, roaring, seething billows. 

Yet it must be crossed over, for only beyond those bil- 
lows lay safety for her. 

So he struggled on desperately, and Death contested every 
inch with him, and yielded very slowly to his exertions. 

But it did yield, for after what seemed a long time, he 
climbed out on the shore, with the inanimate form of Elec- 
tra in his arms, and sank down on the wet ground with 
her head pillowed on his breast. 

He was something of a Hercules in proportion, and 
something of a Samson in strength, but the terrible exer- 
tion he had gone through had exhausted him ; and as he 
sank down on the ground, and knew that she was safe 
from the hungry water, there came a queer ringing in his 
ears, and then thick darkness settled over him, as if it were 
an impenetrable cloud, shutting out from his sight the 
pale face lying there on his breast. 

So he did not see the horrible cut on her head from which 
the blood issued, turning her black hair red where it ran 
down to her neck, marking crimson streaks upon it. 

So, he did not see how much the whiteness of her face 
resembled .the whiteness of death, nor how much the 
silence and stillness that was over her resembled the 
silence and stillness of death. 

So he did not know when she was taken from his arms 
by the party whom Kate Vance had summoned to go to 
the reseue at the village; neither did Electra know it, 
wrapped as she was in that unconsciousness, which, if it 
was not death, at least resembled it as nearly as one thing 
can resemble another. 

Of the three who had been on the roof of that trembling 
cabin, seeing and hearing and feeling the blows of the 
waves upon it— of the three who had struggled in those 
waves and been buffeted by them, only Granny Dean knew 
when she was borne, weeping piteously, while her gar- 
ments dripped forlornly, as if they, too, were shedding 
tears, into the Red Star tavern at Silverdale. 

“Is ’Lee dead? Is my pretty dearie dead?” she asked 
tremulously, for at least the twentieth time, as she was 
borne into a comfortable room by two men, one of whom 
supported her on either side, and who chanced to be the 


90 ELECTRA. 

mild host of the Red Star and his aristocratic boarder, Ray 
Sylvane. 

“We can’t tell yet,” the landlord responded. “I hope I 
not— I hope not, indeed. But we can’t tell yet.” 

Ray Sylvane said nothing, but his face wore a strangely j 
white, set look. 

Was she dead? 

He, too, was mentally asking that question. 

His sensitive nature was filled with remorse which had 
been swift to overtake him when he looked on the still 
form and marble-like face of Electra Dean, remembering i 
that she had loved him — that she had, in her ingenuous- j 
ness or impetuosity, almost told him so, and that he had j 
treated her, if not with disdain, at least with coldness. 

They had changed her wet garments for dry ones; they j 
had sent for the village physician, who had used restora- 
tives as yet without avail, for no sign of life appeared on 
the white rigidity of the beautiful face, and he began to j 
shake his head despondently over his work. 

A lump came into Ray Syl vane’s throat as he looked j 
down upon her,- which threatened to choke him. 

He turned abruptly and went out of the room in which 
there was such confusion reigning around the bed on which 
they had laid her, and he went away to his own private j 
apartment. 

There he began to pace up and down the room with an 
exceedingly troubled look on his colorless face. 

“Yes, I will do it!” he said, halting in his walk, and 1 
speaking with slow distinctness. “ If she lives I will make j 
reparation for all the pain my brutal coldness must have 
cost her. If she lives I will offer to dedicate my life to I 
her!” 

He lifted his hand as he spoke, and then he lifted his j 
eyes for an instant, and added : 

“So help me God l” 

The weak sentimentality which had caused him to take j 
that oath, did not awaken any enthusiasm within him, evi- ■? 
dently— for every particle of color was struck from his 
face, and every gleam from his eyes, as he muttered : 

“ So help me God 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

TANGLED THREADS. 

The most powerful physical organization, while present- j 
ing a stronger resistance to disease than the weaker one j 
does, is nevertheless much slower to recover from any at- ■ 
tack of that kind— just as a great tree is harder to fell, 


ELECTRA. 91 

and correspondingly harder to raise again, than is the sap- 
; ling. 

This fact was evidenced in the case of Barry Tempest. 

When he had fallen into that state of insensibility conse- 
quent upon his terrible mental and physical strain, it 
j seemed as if he would never arouse to consciousness again. 

For it was an hour before he opened his eyes and stared 
! blankly at the familiar articles of his own little room at 
! the Red Star which met his view. 

He was like one who had just awakened from a deep, 
dreamless sleep, which had left both his mind and body in 
, a sluggish state; and he fancied, as his glance noted 
the gray light coming in from the leaden sky, that day 
I had just broken, and that it was only a little past his usual 
hour of rising. 

He sprung from his bed, and an unusual stiffness about 
his elbows was the first reminder that came to him of the 
deadly peril in which he had been. 

Then it, all rushed through his memory with swiftness, 

1 and also with the appalling effect of a flash of lightning. 

“Electra! Where was Electra! Was she still among 
the living?” 

He remembered that her head had lain heavy on his 
breast, that her form had rested limply on his arm when 
that buzzing had come into his ears, and that swift, im- 
i penetrable darkness over his eyes. 

He rushed from his room, and in the hall he encountered 
: the village physician, who was a mild-voiced, mild-eyed 
young man. 

! * Tempest grasped his arm. 

“ Where is Electra Dean?” he asked, hoarsely. 

The doctor motioned with both hand and head toward a 
door opening on the little hall, and Barry Tempest strode 
to it, and unceremoniously turned the knob and went in, 

| and the physician followed. 

He saw Electra lying, white and still, where they had 
placed her on the bed, and the sad-faced German woman, 
j Wilhelmine Bachman, was bending over her, softly touch- 
ing the broad bandage around her head. 

Barry Tempest thrust her roughly aside, and bent over 
the motionless girl. 

A moment after he lifted his head again, and turned his 
face, which had grown ashy and was beaded with great 
drops. 

“"What ails her?” he said hoarsely, grasping the physi- 
! cian’s arm and dragging him to the bedside. “Is she 
; dead?” 

The man of medicine shook his head and knotted his 
brow. 


92 


ELECTRA. 


“ That is the trouble,” he said, pointing to the bandage. 
“ Her skull is badly fractured.” 

“But she is not dead?” Barry Tempest said, his strong 
fingers tightening into an iron-like grip on the doctor’s 
arm. 

Again the man of medicine shook his head. 

“Not dead,” he answered, “but in a state of uncon- 
sciousness from which she may rally, or she may not. 
The result is doubtful. If she does recover, she will likely 
be without reason.” 

Barry Tempest shrank back, and dropped heavily into 
the chair which the German woman had placed at the 
head of the bed a short time before, and he asked 
no more questions, nor made any further remarks, but 
his alert black eyes watched every effort which the doctor, 
assisted by Wilhelmine Bachman, made to restore Electra 
to consciousness. 

After awhile old Granny Dean hobbled into the room, 
fell to weeping when she caught sight of her granddaughter ; 
and bending tremulously over her to rain kisses on the pale 
face. 

“ You can’t do any good here, old lady,” the doctor said, 
meaning no unkindness, but fearing that her grief would 
be troublesome, “so you had better go back to your own 
room.” 

But Wilhelmine Bachman placed her large, plump hand 
on the old woman’s shoulder and said quietly : 

“ She won’t do any harm, doctor; let her stay.” 

So Granny Dean, urged by that large, kind hand, moved 
tremulously around to a chair at the foot of the bed, and 
cried and mumbled incoherently of the terrible freshet, and 
of Electra’s thoughtfulness and bravery in dragging her to 
a place of safety above the surging waters in the loft of 
the crazy cabin. 

The long hours of the day dragged on and Barry Tem- 
pest sat there, never moving except to do something for 
Electra, and never lifting his eyes from her face, so 
beautifuljn its death-like repose, except at those moments 
when he was aiding in some effort for her recovery, and 
hearing the roaring of the river as it plunged and dashed 
along outside. 

As the day went down, so also that angry flood subsided ; 
but the life which seemed to be such a feeble spark in the 
frame of Electra Dean refused to die out utterly, but still 
burned on and on, and slowly but surely it gathered 
Strength. 

The night fell and drifted on into its black noon. 

The dingy and dusty clock standing on the mantel, after 
a hoarse gurgling in its throat, began to strike the mid- 


ELECTRA. 


93 


night hour, and as its first stroke rang sharply out, the 
closed lids of the wounded girl quivered, a spasmodic move- 
ment went over her, and then her eyes opened and looked 
vacantly around. 

“ ’Lee, do you know me ?” 

It was Barry Tempest’s gruff tones, now sharp with anx- 
iety, that put the question to her. 

She heard him, evidently, for her eyes turned with a 
meaningless stare to his face, but she did not speak. 

He repeated the question, laying his large, rough hands 
softly on her bandaged forehead ; but still she made no at- 
tempt to answer him. 

Her eyes, those great, beautiful black eyes, which he had 
seen scintillating with passion so often were dull enough 
now, and they left his face, and wandered vacantly around 
the room. 

Thejphysician bent over her and spoke to her, but she did 
I not heed his words any more than she had those of Barry 
Tempest, and he shook his head, saying to Wilhelmine 
i Bachman, but in a tone loud enough to be distinctly audible 
to Barry Tempest also : 

“Just as I expected. She will live, buther reason is 
gone. That blow on her head has injured her brain.” 

“ It may be only for a time, may it not?” the sad voice 
of the German woman asked. “It is not impossible for 
ij her to recover her reason, is it?” 

“Not impossible, but very improbable, ” the physician 
answered. ‘ ‘ It will likely be a long time first, if she ever 
does.” 

I That was the opinion he gave to Ray Sylvane, when he 
met him in the morning out on the veranda. 

The young man turned away from him, and began to 
pace slowly up and down the long, narrow floor, with his 
forehead knotted with thought. 

“ If her mind remains darkened,” he muttered to him- 
self, while the physician strolled away toward the fall- 
ing river, “ it will put an end to all prospect of a recon- 
S ciliation between Kate and myself, because, of course, 

\ she could never make the explanation which would be 
I needed to insure that result. I must always appear de- 
[ spicable in Kate Vance’s eyes.” 

As he said that, the knots grew deeper on his face, and 
he caught his lip between his teeth, and gnawed it so 
i fiercely that a drop of blood issued from it and stained his 
' brown mustache. 

Three times more he walked up and down the length of 
the veranda, and then he began to mutter again, with the 
bright flush dying out of his face : 

“ Ip two weeks and three days more the fourth of Qcto* 


94 


ELECTRA. 


ber will be here, and unless Miss Bachman recognizes Max 
Bosenfield in Von Hirschberg, and declares him to be con- 
nected disgracefully with the theft of those diamonds, he 
and Kate will marry; I cannot prevent it.” 

And then a minute afterward he added, gnawing his 
lip cruelly between his words: 

“Why should I want to prevent it? The oath I have 
sworn in regard to Electra Dean if she recovers her reason, 
will put a barrier of itself, between me and any woman 
but Electra. She loves me so. well, poor child, so much 
better than Kate Vance ever did or ever could do, that it 
was but just that I should have made that vow, and but 
just that I should keep it. Yes, if Electra Dean lives and 
recovers her reason, I will ask her to marry me, notwith- 
standing the great gulf of social position that lies between 
us. My life has been worthless to me ever since the tenth 
of April last. I may as well give it to a woman who loves 
me, as to waste it in gloomy repinings for one who does 
not care for me.” 

He seemed to be encouraging himself, to be arguing with 
himself; to be bracing himself up, as it were, for the per- 
formance of a hateful task, from which every instinct of 
his nature shrank. 

A few minutes afterward, Wilhelmine Bachman came 
out on the veranda, B and he turned to her and asked ab- 
ruptly : 

“What do you think of Miss Dean’s condition? The 
doctor says that she will be likely never to recover her 
reason !” 

“I think the doctor is mistaken,” Wilhelmine answered 
quietly, “I think she will recover her mind. It may be 
some time first, but I think it will come back after awhile. 
Something tells me so, and for the sake of that poor man, 
who loves her so devotedly, I pray that she may.” 

She nodded as she spoke toward Barry Tempest, who 
had left the house and was going toward the stables with 
his head bowed as Bay Sylvane had never seen it bowed 
before, and the sight touched him with pity. 

A fellow feeling had suddenly been awakened in his 
breast for that rough, unlettered man; and a chord of 
sympathy trembled for him as he saw his tall, magnificent 
form going with such a sorrowful droop in it to the per- 
formance of his accustomed duties there at the Red Star. 

Ray Sylvane for the first time was struck with the fact 
that he occupied exactly the same position toward Barry 
Tempest, that Von Hirschberg occupied toward him. 

He stood between him and the woman he loved. 

“It is a terrible tangle,” Ray Sylvane muttered, draw- 


ELECTRA. 


95 


ing his hand unsteadily across his damp forehead. “God 
help us both, Barry Tempest !” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE FOURTH OF OCTOBER. 

The September days glided by, each dropping an addi- 
tional tinge of crimson, brown, and gold on the foliage of 
the trees and shrubs, and on the long lines of the grass. 

The wind played on the strings of nature with a more 
decided touch, and those strings gave back a sharper sound 
than when the tender green clothed hill and vale. 

[ To Ray Sylvane the crisp breaking of the rustling things 
under foot, seemed sharp utterances of pain, because of 
the ceaseless and irritating pain at his heart. 

To Barry Tempest no such poetic fancies came, he heard 
no sympathetic voices in nature. His sensibilities were not 
delicate enough for that ; but he did know that he was very 
miserable — that his heart was as as heavy as a stone in his 
breast. 

He had no pleasure save in the society of Electra Dean. 
Although she never spoke one word to him. 

Since the morning of the freshet, when she had been 
brought dripping and wounded into the Red Star, no one 
had ever heard the sound of her voice. 

In the singular, and complete forgetfulness of all the 
past, which had settled over her after that awful blow on 
her head, her knowledge of words and speech seemed also 
to have been lost. 

Certain it is that she made no response to any word that 
was addressed to her, and only indicated her wants by 
signs. She did that, too, in a dumb, vague way, like one 
who was asleep. 

If she evinced a shade of partiality for anything, or any- 
body, it was for Wilhelmine Bachman and Barry Tempest. 

She was very restless, moving, in a circumscribed circle, 
aimlessly about, and never quiet for an instant when she 
was awake, except when the hand of Barry Tempest, or of 
the German woman rested on her shoulder. 

Then she would some times sit down on the grass, and 
stare in an apathetic way at the river; and it was at such 
times, with his restraining hand controlling her, that Barry 
Tempest was happiest. 

Granny Dean and Electra had remained at the Red 
Star ever since that terrible morning. 

That very day the kind-hearted landlord had said to 
Ray Sylvane, in his simple, earnest way : 

“ I’ll let the old lady and ’Lee stay here. I’ll never miss 


95 ELECTRA. 

what they eat. And the room they take won't make no 
great odds.” 

Ray Sylvane had answered, looking straight into the 
mild face of the man : 

“You’re a generous person, John Goldman. Take me 
into partnership with you, let me share in the support of 
that old woman and her helpless granddaughter.” 

John Goldman was a man of few words, and less book 
learning, but his own great, generous heart taught him to 
understand another. So he comprehended that he would 
confer a favor on Ray Sylvane by permitting him, out of 
his abundance, to contribute something to the support of 
those two helpless waifs whom fortune had brought under 
his roof. 

In a few words the bargain was struck, and only 
John Goldman and Ray Sylvane knew that they had con- 
stituted themselves financially the guardians of old Granny 
Dean and Electra. 

Since the morning Kate Yance had brought that star- 
tling piece of news to the village — the news of the sub- 
merged cabin in the ravine — she had not been in Silver- 
dale. But it was well known there, and in all the country 
round about, that she was busy with grand preparations 
for her wedding with Von Hirschberg. 

Letters, addressed always in the same stiff hand, and 
post-marked at various places, came regularly to her once 
or twice each week, and John Goldman’s clerk knew that 
they cane from Von Hirschberg, because Miss Vance’s 
mail-carrier always deposited as many in the office di- 
rected in her delicate cliirography to Count Von Hirsch- 
berg. 

Wilhelmine Bachman also remained a guest of the Red 
Star. 

Always wearing a look which was a strange blending of 
patience and determination, she waited for the bride- 
groom expected on the fourth of October at Silver Bend to 
arrive. 

Ray Sylvane remembered that Harker had told him 
Mrs. Dulany suspected this woman, Wilhelmine Bach- 
man, of having stolen her jewels, and he had been impress- 
sed at the time with the idea that the detective himself 
seemed not to share in the suspicion, and seemed always 
to regard the woman more as a witness against Max 
Rosenfield, her missing lover, than as the real culprit. 

After seeing Wilhelmine Bachman, Ray Sylvane did not 
wonder any further on that point. He only wondered how 
Mrs. Dulany could have entertained a moment’s suspicion 
against any one wearing such a face as that of the German 
woman, 


ELECTRA. 


97 


“If Harker knew she was here, however, he would 
i arrest her in order to force her to testify against some one 
else, perhaps,” Ray muttered to himself as he sat in his 
own room on the night of her arrival. ‘ ‘ I believe she can 
be trusted to go her own way. I believe she will unmask 
Von Hirschberg if it is possible for her to do it. So I shall 
not inform Harker of her presence here. She shall bide 
i her time until Von Hirschberg returns, which will not be 
long now to wait.” 

As the days glided by, Ray Sylvane held to that resolve, 
and kept his peace in regard to Wilhelmine Bachman. 

That first conversation in regard to Von Hirschberg 
which he had held with her had also been the last. 

She waited in silence, and he knew for what she waited, 
and also kept silence on the subject. 

So time passed on — the sun rose and set over the monot- 
onous-days, which brought no change to any of the parties 
interested in this story, except an additional intensity of 
; the fever of unrest which possessed them — and at last the 
! eventful fourth of October arrived. 

It was a beautiful, golden day, and the clouds that float- 
ed across the deep blue sky were like pillows of golden 
light, and the hills and valleys surrounding Silverdale 
were like altars of ripe fruit and rich flowers. 

“ I expect Von Hirschberg will come up on the boat to- 
day,” John Goldman remarked at the breakfast table. 

Ray Sylvane was not there. He was roaming over the 
hills, as he had been doing ever since daybreak, when he 
had lifted his feverish head from a sleepless pillow. So 
: there was no one present so interested in the observation of 
the good landlord as Wilhelmine Bachman. 

She dropped her knife and fork, and turned her large 
• blue eyes full on his face as she asked, quietly : 

“ What time is the boat due here?” 

“ About twelve o’clock,” John Goldman answered. “ It 
hardly ever gets here before that time.” 

Wilhelmine said no more. She toyed with the morsels 
on her plate for awhile, and then she pushed back her plate, 
and leaving her breakfast almost untasted, she went out of 
the dining-room, and turned her steps in the direction of 
her own chamber. 

As she passed' down the hall, through the open hall door 
she caught a glimpse of Electra, who was wandering slowly 
along the banks of the now quiet, silvery river alone. 

Instead of going to her own room, as she had intended to 
do, Wilhelmine turned her steps in the direction of the 
river bank also. 

She reached Electra’s side, and placed her hand familiarly 
\ on her arm. 


98 


ELEGTRA. 


The bright black eyes of the girl were instantly turned 
upon her, and she noticed something in their expression 
■which she had not seen before. For the first time, too, she 
heard the sound of the poor girl’s voice: 

‘ ‘ Flowers ! Flowers !” 

Electra enunciated the syllables eagerly, pointing as she 
did so away to the hills, between which ran the old, famil- 
iar ravine. 

She quickened her steps, and Wilhelmine, struck 
dumb with surprise, followed her. 

So, with Electra leading, and Wilhelmine following, 
they went away to the hill overlooking the spot where the 1 
little cottage of Granny Dean had stood so long. 

It was the first time Electra had seen the spot since the 
time of the freshet, and it seemed to stir some chord of 
memory in her vacant mind. 

She stared helplessly at the place for a few minutes, and 
then she asked in a piteous, childish way : 

“ Where is the house?” i 

Wilhelmine could not catch her meaning, for she looked 
on the place for the first time, so she made an evasive an- 
swer, and led the young girl away toward the village 
again. 

Time had passed rapidly and imperceptibly. 

It was high noon when the creaking sign of the Red Star 
burst in their sight again. 

In the hall of the hotel, they met Ray Sylvane. 

His face was strangely disturbed, and there was a wild, 
feverish glitter in his eyes. 

He stopped Wilhelmine with a touch of his hand on her 
arm. 

“ Do you know that he has come?” he asked, eagerly. 

“ Who has come?” Wilhelmine responded, a dash of red , 
coming into her face. “ I have seen no one. I have been j 
walking over the hills.” 

“Von Hirschberg,” Ray responded. “He came on the] 
boat an hour ago. He has gone to Silver Bend.” 

“ Then I will go to Silver Bend also,” Wilhelmine said j 
quietly, although a tremor ran over her. “ I cannot endure 
this suspense an hour longer than is necessary.” 

She turned from him as she spoke, leaving Electra with 
him, and went swiftly away in the direction of Silver 
Bend. 

“ I must know if he is Max Rosenfield,” she muttered. 
“I must see whether I shall interfere with that marriage 
to-night, or let it go on.” 

t r / 


ELECTRA. 


99 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

UNMASKED. 

In the luxurious parlor at Silver Bend Kate Vance was 
sitting, in company with Count von Hirschberg. 

The sunshine that fell in such a glow of old gold on the 
pine-trees, and on the roof and walls of the great, old- 
fashioned mansion, stole in through crevices in the closed 
blinds of the window, and lay in glistening arrows here and 
i there on the roses of the velvet carpet. 

The room was adorned with wreaths and knots of ever- 
greens and rare flowers, and all the atmosphere was filled 
I with their odors. 

“ In a few hours now,” Von Hirschberg said, looking at 
his betrothed through the gold-rimmed glasses with which 
he had adorned his Roman nose — “ in ja few hours now de 
crown of my happiness will haf come. You vill be my 
vife.” 

Was there something terrible in the prospect that the 
beautiful face of Miss Vance should have taken such a 
deathly hue ? 

Certain it is that the expression of those perfect features 
i changed. 

It had not been a happy expression before, not such as 
one would naturally look to see on the face of an expectant 
bride— far from it. But it changed to one of absolute mis- 
ery as he said that. 

He reached out to take her hand, but she frustrated the 
design by rising quickly, and going to the center-table, on 
the marble slab of which a waiter of creamy blossoms shone, 

;i and bending over them, she hid her face for an instant over 
their fragrant leaves, while two tears fell from her eyes 
1 upon them, as if they were drops of dew. 

At that instant the faint tinkling of a bell came softly 
through the stillness, which she heard through the leaden 
despair that was over her without noticing. 

Von Hirschberg heard it, also, but the faint sound did 
; not disturb him ; it conveyed no warning of impending 
j calamity to him. 

He was flushed with a sense of triumph ; he was secure 
in the fortune which had ruled his suit so far, giving him 
success when he had scarcely hoped for it, and he had 
faith in his good luck. 

He felt that it would abide with him to the end now— to 
the end which was so near, and which would see him the 
husband of the beautiful heiress, who in the recklessness 
of her mood had plighted her troth to him. 

He heard, without heeding it, the step of the servant 
passing along the hall outsirV tn the front door. He heard 


100 


ELECTRA. 


also the opening of the front door without any feeling of 
concern, for his eyes and thoughts were fixed on the beau- 
tiful woman bending still over the waiter of flowers. 

It was only when the parlor door unclosed that- his at- 
tention was attracted. 

He glanced around ; so, also, did Miss Vance. 

There on the threshold of the parlor, with her eyes fixed 
on Von Hirschberg, was Wilhelmine Bachman! 

The color fled from the swarthy face of the German, and 
he sat like one suddenly paralyzed, and gazed at Wilhel- 
mine as if she were a visitant from the grave. 

Kate looked at her in surprise for a few seconds, and 
then she went forward, and halted before her, saying : 

“Will you walk in, and have a chair, madam?” 

The great, blue eyes of Wilhelmine, which had been 
fixed in that persistent gaze on Von Hirschberg, turned to 
Kate for the first time. 

“Thank you,” she said, speaking slowly, and in a 
strained, unnatural way. 

She walked past Kate then, and advanced toward Von 
Hirschberg and halted before him. 

She was about to speak to him, butr she began to tremble 
so that she sank down on the sofa beside him, in the place 
Miss Vance had occupied a few minutes before. 

He shrank away, and made a movement to rise, but her 
large hand fell upon his shoulder and detained him, while 
she said, with a quiver and break in her rich voice : 

“Max, how could you behave so treacherously by me, 
when you knew how fully I trusted your love ; when you 
knew how much I have borne, how much punishment I 
have taken from my conscience for your sake?” 

He had collected himself, as it were, by this time ; the 
color had come back into his face in a dark tide, and his 
eyes gleamed defiantly through his glasses as he turned 
them upon her. 

“ I know nothing about you, woman,” he said, angrily, 
and with an effort at scorn; “Vat do you mean by coming 
to a gentleman and calling him by a name dat is not his 
name?” 

Her lips were compressed and her sorrowful blue eyes 
looked earnestly, reproachfully into his for a half minute 
before she spoke, and her tone was inexpressibly sad, but 
wonderfully decisive: 

“There is no use for you to atttempt to deceive me, 
Max Rosenfield ; I, of all persons in the world, would be 
hardest for you to deceive.” 

Kate Vance had remained standing at the door, utterly 
bewildered, staring at the visitor and listening to her in- 
comprehensible words. 


ELKCTRA. 


101 


As if moved by a sudden impulse she went forward. 

“Evidently you have made a mistake, madam. This 
gentleman is Count von Hirschberg,” she said, dropping 
into a chair in front of the sofa on which they were sitting. 

‘ ‘ Of course, she haf made a mistake ; of course I am de 
Count von Hirschberg!” he said, savagely, shaking his 
head in a warning way at Wilhelmine. 

Again she compressed her lips, and fixed that reproach- 
ful look on his face before she responded, and this time her 
words were addressed to Miss Vance: 

“ I am very sorry, indeed, for your sake, if you are Miss 
Vance, to say that you are mistaken in supposing him to 
be Count von Hirschberg, or any one else except Max 
ftosenfield. It gives me a great deal of pain, to tell you 
something that I feel it is my duty to tell you, because I 
know it will cause a great deal of trouble and mortifica- 
tion. But this man is already married. His name is Max 
Kosenfield, and he is my husband.” 

“ It is not true !” he cried, fury coming over him, so that 
he raised his hand, and would have dealt a blow with it in 
the face of his denouncer, had she not lifted her own strong 
hands, and caught and held it firmly. 

Her face was deathly pale, but her voice was low and 
calm as she said : 

“You forget yourself, Max.” 

‘ 4 What does this mean. Is what this woman says true?” 

It was Kate Vance’s voice, although strained and hoarse, 
that asked the question, and it was Miss Vance’s hand that 
pressed heavily on his shoulder. 

He glanced up into her face, and he shrank and cowered, 
but he said, persisting in his bravado : 

“ No — it is not true, it is false* it is as false as de devil !” 

When he said that, Miss Vance sank back into her chair, 
and looked from one to the other of them, with her breath 
coming in gasps through her parted lips. 

The expression on Wilhelmine’s face had never changed 
for an instant, it was a blending of touching sadness and 
firm resolve, which marked her voice also, and gave to 
both an undeniable character of truth, which Kate Vance 
felt while looking at one, and listening to the other. 

‘ ‘ It seems to me that it would hardly be necessary for 
me to bring any positive proof of my assertion to cause 
you to defer your marriage, at any rate, until you could 
ascertain if what I have told you is true. Because it 
would be a terrible thing for you to marry a man who has 
already a living wife. But I can give you proof that I 
think you may, perhaps, recognize. He has let his hair 
grow long, and has shaven off his beard since this picture 


102 ELECTRA. 

was taken; but you see the eye and brow and nose are the 
same.” 

She had taken a photograph from her pocket which she 
handed to Miss Vance as she spoke. 

“It is a slander,” Von Hirschberg kept on repeating, 
darting menacing glances at Wilhelmine. 

Miss Vance took the picture and scrutinized it, lifting 
her eyes only to compare the features with the working 
ones of the man there before her, who in a few hours 
would have been her husband but for this. 

At the bottom of the picture was written, in the same 
stiff, black characters which she had come to know so 
well: 

“ Max Rosenfield to his beloved wife, Wilhelmine.” 

Miss Vance’s face was as white and rigid as if it had 
been carved from marble, and her voice had a far-off sound 
as she gave the photograph back into the hands of Wilhel- 
mine, saying: 

“ The features are the same. He is your husband, I be- 
lieve. Take him out of my sight, please.” 

“ It is false!” Von Hirschberg cried, springing to his feet. 
“ De marriage shall take place. She is a slanderer. Until 
now, I haf never laid eyes on her. I vill gif her over to de 
police !” 

For the first time a tinge of color came into Wilhelmine’s 
face. 

Her dormant anger had been aroused by his threat. 

“Be careful, Max Rosenfield,” she said, with that ring 
of truth clearly evident in her voice, “ that I do not give 
you over to the police ! And I will do it— as much as I have 
loved you— I will do it if you do not return to Mrs. Dulany 
the diamonds 340 U stole from her. The secret has weighed 
on my conscience until it has almost killed me. I ran 
away from the Astor House to keep from telling on you,, 
but I determined all the time to expose you if you did not 
return the diamonds to their proper owner.” 

That declaration— that the man she had agreed to marry, 
the man whom she had, indeed, come so near marrying! 
was a sneak-thief — acted on the already overstrained 
nerves of proud Kate Vance like the fabled feather that 
broke the camel’s hack. She gave way utterly, and fell to 
the floor in a death-like swoon. 

Wilhelmine sprung to the bell-cord and jerked it vigor- 
ously, while Von Hirschberg, or Rosenfield, strode toward 
the door. 

Wilhelmine followed him. 

In the hall they encountered the servant who came 
hurrying toward the parlor, alarmed by the violence of 
the summons on the bell. 


ELECTRA. 


103 


“Your mistress is ill in the parlor,” Wilhelm ine said, 
briefly; and then she followed after Yon Hirschberg or 
Rosenfield down the avenue of pine-trees. 

She overtook him and laid her hand on his arm. 

“Max,” she said, in her calm, musical voice, “evil 
ways are unhappy ones. Get into the straight path again. 
Let me return Mrs. Dulany’s diamonds to her. You have 
not sold them, have you?” 

“ I have pawned them for five hundred dollars,” he said 
sullenly. ? 

“ Then I will redeem them,” she said, “ for I have nearly 
one thousand dollars which my brother who died six weeks 
ago in New Orleans left me in his will. With what is left 
of it, I will buy a little business of some kind, where we 
can make an honest living. You will come back to me 
and begin life anew, won't you?” 

“If you haf de money to make de home, I vill go to it,” 
he responded, with the surliness to a great extent gone 
from his voice — and then after a minute, during which 
they had been walking along with her hand on his arm — 
he added : 

“ I get into bad ways when I get away from you.” 

“Then you had better stay with me, and never leave 
me,” she responded earnestly. 

“ My baggage is at the Red Star,” he said, as if suddenly 
reminded, “ I must get it.” 

“We will go to the Red Star,” Wilhelmine answered 
quietly. “ I want to see some one there, and then, when 
the boat comes back this evening, which it will do at about 
six o’clock, we will leave Silverdale forever.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

A REVELATION. 

Ray Sylvane, with that terrible fever of unrest over him, 
was wandering, as he had been all day long through the 
woods, with a sense of loss heavy at his heart and brain. 

He wanted no companion save nature— if it would have 
been possible to have done so, he would have become ob- 
livious of his own identity even. Yet he was not alone — 
at least m the sense of spiritual companionship— for the 
unseen but keenly felt presence of his lost love, Kate "V ance, 
was with him all the time. 

It seemed to him that she was dead, and that he was 
weeping over her grave — only his sorrow was keener than 
it would have been if he had indeed been mourning her 
death. 

He felt that she was lost to him, and the manner of that 


104 


ELECTRA. 


loss was worse than it would have been, had she been 
snatched from him by the inevitable hand of death. 

He had clung, unconsciously, to the hope that something 
would occur to prevent her marriage with Yon Hirschberg. 

She did not love Yon Hirschberg ; he felfc sure of that, and 
that consciousness made the sacrifice of her marriage more 
terrible to him. 

Now, he had given up the idea that anything would 
happen to prevent that marriage. The idea that Wilhel- 
mine Bachman would find Yon Hirschberg to be an im- 
postor — a hotel thief — had left him, so he wandered discon- 
solately through the woods alone. 

Late in the evening he strolled down toward the river. 

Far up the stream he saw the smoke of the steamboat, 
and heard its signal whistle to land at the wharf of Silver- 
dale. 

In the aimlessness of his wanderings he stationed himself 
at a point overlooking the wharf, where he could see the 
boat, while he should remain unseen by any one at the 
landing. 

The sun was going down, like a drowning thing in bil- 
lows of red clouds, and the warm glow fell like a mist of 
glory on the boat, and on the people thronging the 
landing. 

As his eyes roved listlessly over the crowd, they were 
caught by two persons who were evidently preparing to 
embark on the steamer — and he could scarcely believe the 
evidence of his own vision, so startled was he by the un- 
expected sight of one of those persons. 

It was Yon Hirschberg who, valise in hand, was waiting 
on the bank beside Wilhelmine Bachman! 

Surely he did not intend to go away? Surely the valise 
in his hand was hers, and not his ! 

This thought flashed through the bewildered mind of 
Bay Sylvane, and without comprehending what he was 
doing really, he made his way rapidly down to the 
landing. 

Wilhelmine was glancing eagerly around, as if in search 
of some one among the crowd, and when she caught sight 
of him, her large, mild eyes lit up with a gleam of pleas- 
urable recognition, and she turned and went back to meet 
him, her hand extended toward him. 

“ I am glad you have come,” she said, as he mechanically 
shook hands with her. ‘ 1 1 wanted to see you before I left. 
I have something astonishing to tell you.” 

“ Is it, what you have to tell me, that you have discov- 
ered any thing about the man yonder?” he asked in an in- 
coherent way, nodding toward Yon Hirschberg, who was 
glancing back at them. 


ELECTRA. 


105 


* ‘ No, it is not that,” she answered ; and seeing the shadow 
that fell over his face, she added : 

“ But I must tell you something astonishing about him, 
too. He is not Von Hirschberg, but Max Rosenfield, and 
my husband. I was secretly married to him the very day 
Mrs. Dulany’s jewels disappeared, but at the time, I knew 
nothing of them. It was because I insisted upon having 
them returned to their rightful owner that he ran away 
from me. I don’t think he was a deliberate thief, though. 
They were thrown in his way, and he yielded to a moment- 
ary temptation to take them. In less than three days 
Mrs. Dulany will have them again in her possession.” 

Ray Sylvane’s face had grown as white as death. He 
fairly gasped for breath. 

“ And he will not marry Miss Vance?” he said, mutter- 
ingly. 

Wilhelmine shook her head. 

“ He will not marry her,” she said. “ He is already my 
husband.” 

The warning bell of the boat sounded, and Von Hirsch- 
berg beckoned and called to her. 

“ I must go,” she said, hurriedly. “What I had to tell 
you is that a most astonishing thing has occurred. Electra 
Dean has suddenly regained her mind !” 

She shook hands with him, and turned and went hur- 
riedly away to join her husband, with whom she entered 
the boat, and disappeared forever from Ray Sylvane’s 
sight, although years afterward he heard from her, and 
learned that she was living with her husband in the far 
West, and that he had developed into a first-rate farmer, 
whose excellence as a husband and citizen in his wild 
region was held as something remarkable. 

The boat pushed away from the shore, and Ray Sylvane 
stood staring after it like one in a dream. 

But it was a blissful dream, for Kate— his beloved Kate 
— was not to be married that evening to Von Hirsch- 
berg! 

For several minutes that idea excluded all others from 
his mind. Then, with the suddenness of an electric shock, 
he remembered what she had told him about Electra 
Dean. 

He remembered, also, at that moment, the solemn vow 
he had made to offer himself in marriage to the girl if she 
should recover her reason. 

And she had recovered it. 

Great drops broke out on his forehead. He staggered 
like a drunken man, and then he turned, and went in a 
blind, unsteady way to the hotel. 


f 


10G 


ELECTRA. 


The first person he met was Electra Dean, who was 
standing alone on the veranda, with the warm glow of 
the sunset lighting up her picturesque beauty. 

At the first glance he cast upon her he saw the change 
which had been wrought in her in a few hours. 

The black eyes she turned on him were filled with the 
unmistakable light of reason. 

She was looking after the large, fine form of Barrry Tem- 
pest, who had evidently just parted from her, for he was 
passing from the veranda toward the stables, where his 
charges waited for him in the shape of a half dozen horses. 

‘ ‘ The sooner it is over with the better, ” Ray Syl vane mut- 
tered to himself, wetting his parched lips with his tongue. 

Then he went straight up to her where she stood on the 
veranda, and as she turned her black eyes upon him he 
said: 

“ You have gotten well at last, Electra.” 

“ I have just waked up, I think,” she said, knitting her 
arched brows and speaking in a puzzled tone. “ I seem to 
have been asleep, and in a dream, only I remember the 
dream — parts of it, I mean— and the persons who were with 
me in it.” 

As she spoke she glanced toward Barry Tempest, who at 
the moment was disappearing in the stables, and a soft 
gleam came into her bright eyes. 

“ Yes, you have just awakened, as it were,” Ray respond- 
ed, speaking in a tone of dull despair, but in a very gentle 
one, notwithstanding, while his face still retained its white, 
set look. And then he added, the words falling hurriedly 
from his dry lips : 

“I want to talk to you. I have something to tell you. 
Come with me into the parlor.” 

He passed on into the house as he spoke and she fol- 
lowed him, and they both entered the parlor. 

Ray Sylvane threw himself on the sofa, and motioned 
her to take a seat beside him, which she mechanically did, 
with her face evincing keen curiosity, for she knew in- 
stinctively that what he had to say to her was a matter of 
vital importance to him. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE SCALES FALL. 

For fully five minutes Ray Sylvane and Electra Dean 
sat there, side by side, on the worn sofa in the little parlor 
of the Red Star, without exchanging a word. 

For days past, while the light of returning reason was 
struggling into her brain, it had seemed to the girl as if 


ELECTRA. 


107 


she was slowly awakening from a mystifying dream, and 
she seemed to herself to be relapsing into its puzzling mists 
and shadows again as she sat there beside Ray Sylvane 
waiting for him to speak. 

She noticed without understanding it that his face was 
deathly pale, and that it wore an expression of touching 
hopelessness. 

He turned his eyes from her and fixed them on a fading 
line of sunset that streaked the dingy carpet, and ran his 
fingers tremulously up and down the links of his gold 
watch-chain as he spoke, the words coming rapidly from 
his lips : 

“ Electra, the fancy came to me some time ago that you 
cared for me more than I deserved that you should, per- 
haps, and that that was the reason that caused you to give 
me that drugged water which prevented my marriage with 
Kate Vance on the tenth of April last. That idea led me 
to forgive you for the act — was it true?” 

At the blunt question her face flushed to a scarlet hue, 
and drooped low on her breast. 

“ No,” she answered, speaking with an effort, and in a 
shamed voice. “When! poured some of grandmother’s 
sleeping drops into the water, I only did it out of spite to- 
ward Miss Vance, because she had struck me with her rid- 
ing-whip.” 

In that assertion she had spoken truthfully, for the strong 
fancy which took possession of her for him, came suddenly 
to her afterward when she had looked upon him lying so 
helplessly and unconsciously there in the starlight. 

At the confession a bright color swept into Ray Sylvane’s 
face, and a quick light leaped into his eyes. 

He turned them upon her, warm with a great thankful- 
ness, and said, reaching out his hand to clasp hers in the 
kindest touch he had ever bestowed upon her : 

“I was mistaken, then — thank God that I was mistaken ! 
It is so much better for us both as it is, because, feeling 
that I had, although unintentionally, interfered with your 
happiness. I vowed, if you lived through the terrible dan- 
ger that followed your rescue from the torrent, and your 
reason was restored, to offer you my hand in marriage ; 
and it would have been, I feel it now, a great wrong to 
you, and myself, too, because I had no love in my heart for 
you, save the love of a brother for a beautiful sister. It 
was to make that offer to you that I brought you in here a 
few minutes ago. But now it is not necessary that I 
should make it, seeing that I was so much mistaken in my 
judgment of your heart.” 

Her flushed face was still bent low over her breast, which 
rose and fell with the strength of some great emotion. 


108 ELECTRA. 

But she did not attempt to withdraw her hand from his 
warm clasp. 

“I was mistaken in my own heart,” she said, softly. 
“ In that dream that I seemed to be in — that dream in 
which I was never happy except when I was with Barry 
Tempest, I either came to understand myself, or I under- 
went a change — I don’t know which — I only know that 
when Wilhelmine told me this afternoon .about the flood, 
.and about how I was rescued from it, I suddenly 
recollected all about it. I had forgotten it before, and I 
felt that I owed my life to Barry Tempest, seeing that he 
had risked his own to save it, and it made me so happy to 
feel that I did owe it to him that I knew then how much 
more I cared for him than I had ever dbne for any one 
else. An hour ago I told him so, and I am going to give it 
over to his care all the rest of the days that lie and I may 
be spared to live on earth.” 

Her low, musical voice thrilled with a power of feeling 
that Ray Sylvane had never heard in it before, and his 
own heart thrilled with an ecstasy of sympathetic joy. 

“ So, you are going to marry Barry Tempest?” he said, 
softly. He is a brave, loyal fellow. God bless him and 
you. too!” 

“Yes, I am going to marry Barry Tempest,” she re- 
sponded, with a flutter of happiness in her voice. “ But 
before I marry him, I am going to pay Miss Vance the 
debt of obligation I owe to her. Barry has told me that it 
was her who sent him to my rescue. She shall not go un- 
rewarded for it. As sure as my name is Electra Dean I 
will do her a good turn for it !” 

Ray Sylvane grasped her hand so tightly that she winced 
with the pain, and bent his face close to hers, which was 
turned toward him. 

“ What is the good return you intend to make?” he asked 
with hoarse intensity. 

She sent a bright smile up to him from her red lips and 
her flashing eyes. Her whole being was thrilled with the 
great happiness of doing a good deed, and it was mani- 
fested in her voice as she answered: 

“lam going to make that explanation to her that you 
asked me to make so many weeks ago. I am going to tell 
her whose fault it was that you were not at Silver Bend' on 
the tenth of April !” 

Ray Sylvane raised her hand to his lips and kissed it 
rapturously. 

“Will you go now, this very hour?’ he asked impa- 
tiently. 

She nodded brightly, dislodging two tears from her eyes, 
as she rose to her feet saying: 


ELECTRA. 


106 

“Yes. I will go now, right now, and in less then an 
hour and a half I shall bring you her forgiveness.” 

She glided from the room as she spoke, leaving him with 
his head whirling with mad joy. 

From the window, he saw her a minute afterward pass- 
ing rapidly away in the twilight with her face turned in 
the direction of Silver Bend. 

Then, how slo wly the time passed ! How long that hour 
and a half was! It seemed to him, in the fever of his im- 
patience as if it would never pass. 

He ate no supper. When the bell sounded for that 
meal, instead of going on to the dining-room, he left the 
hotel and walked swiftly in the direction Electra had 
taken. 

“ I can’t wait for her to come. I will go and meet her,” 
he said to himself. 

The twilight had deepened into night, but it was such a 
clear, beautiful moonlight night. Every object was dis- 
tinctly visible for a long distance before him as he strode 
along the turnpike road in the direction of Silver Bend. 

After awhile it revealed to him the graceful figure of 
Electra Dean coming swiftly toward him with her light, 
free step. 

He almost ran to her. 

“What did she say?” he asked, breathlessly, when he 
had come within a few yards of her. 

“ She says,” Electra answered, shaking h§r crisp black 
curls saucily, “that she would rather tell you what she 
thinks about your conduct that evening herself. She has 
forgiven me for my share in it, and in proof of it she gave 
me this.” 

She held out her round arm, on which gleamed a gold 
bracelet, and then she dropped it to her side again, and 
flitted past him, going on her way to the Red Star, while 
he hurried on, with his heart in his throat, to Silver Bend, 
and to Kate Vance. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE LAST. 

It was eight o’clock when Ray Sylvane rang the bell at 
Silver Bend. 

He noticed that the house, which was to have been, for 
the second time lighted up fora wedding, was dark, except 
for a lamp that burned in the hall and another that burned 
in the library. 

He asked the servant who answered his summons on the 
bell, if he could see Miss Vance. 


no 


ELECTKA. 


The man shook his head. 

“ Miss Kate was ill,” he said, “ and he had been told to 
tell all the guests that came, that the marriage would not 
take place.” 

Ray saw that he had been mistaken for one of the wed- 
ding guests, and he drew a card from his pocket, and also 
a pencil, and under his name he wrote : 

“ Let me see you if only for five minutes.” 

“Give that to Miss Vance,” he said, handing it to the 
man. “ I will wait here for an answer.” 

The negro took the card and went away with it. 

In a minute's time he returned. 

“ Walk into the library, Mr. Sylvane, Miss Kate will see 
you.” 

Trembling with excitement Ray followed him into the 
library, moving through the delicious and half-intoxi- 
cating odors which the flowers adorning the house 
breathed on the air, and waited for Miss Vance to appear. 

He was not forced to endure the torture of impatience 
long. 

In a few minutes he heard a light step in the hall, and 
the flutter of silken garments, and then Kate — his wor- 
shiped love — Kate, whom all day long he had been mourn- 
ingas one mourns for the dead, stood before him. 

He saw her halt a few feet inside the door, with the 
color coming and going on her beautiful face — a queen 
among women in her regal grace— and then — 

His arms were around her, and her head was pillowed 
on his breast, and her heart was beating against his own ! 

They spoke no word, there was no need that they should. 
Each understood that a full, and blissful recognition had 
taken place between them, and there was no need to spe tk 
of the bitter past, to point to the wide gulf which had sep- 
arated them. 

After awhile, when they were sitting together on the 
sofa, and her eyes were looking up to his, from her pillow 
on his breast, the door-bell clanged discordantly, breaking 
through the sweet silence that was over them. 

Kate sprung up, with a flush darkening her face. 

“ The wedding guests are arriving,” she said. “There 
seems to be a stern intention on the part of fate to prevent 
me from marrying. Twice the project has been defeated.” 

Ray Sylvane, struck by a sudden thought, plunged his 
hand into his pocket and drew out a worn paper. 

“ This is the marriage license I obtained for you and me.” 

The step of the servant passing at the moment down the 
hall to the door, fell on his ear. 


ELECTRA. 


ill 


He ran forward and opened the door of the library, and 
spoke hurriedly to the man. 

“ Show the guest in, Miss Vance is better, and she will 
be married this evening.” 

“ What do you mean?” Kate asked, standing wide-eyed 
in the center of the room. 

“I mean just what I say,” he answered, twining his 
arms around her. “ You shall be married this evening, 
only there will be a change of bridegrooms, which there 
will be no necessity to explain to the visitors. Now that 
I have you I will not risk the chance of losing you again. 
The license is here, the guests are arriving, and the bride 
and groom are ready. I will let you go just long enough 
to don your wedding finery— if you so desire, but as for 
myself, you shall take me as I am !” 

If she had meant to have objected to his arrangements, 
he gave her no opportunity of doing so, for the shower 
of kisses he rained on her lips. 

“ The marriage is set for nine o clock,” he said, glancing 
up at the timepiece on the mantel “it lacks just a half 
hour until then. You had best made haste, for promptly 
at the stroke of nine I will call at your door for you. 
Until then, I will go in and speak to your father.” 

Saying never a word, but in her blushing, trembling 
silence agreeing to his demand, she slipped from the 
library, and he rang the bell, and after writing a hurried 
note to her father, he sent it to the old gentleman, and wait- 
ed for him to answer it. 

He did so in a few minutes in person. Kate had already 
told him, before Ray’s arrival at Silver Bend, of what 
Electra Dean had revealed to her, and he begged to apol- 
ogize for his harsh words and treatment of the young 
man, and to assure him (which he did with tears in his 
eyes) of how very happy he was at the change in bride- 
grooms. He was rejoiced to have the marriage take place 
with Ray Sylvane in the place of Count von Hirschberg. 

And so the marriage (lid take place at a few minutes of 
nine o’clock, the ceremony being performed by an Episco- 
palian clergyman, amid murmurs of surprise at the very 
different bridegroom from the person the invitations had 
announced. 

But they settled into the conviction that it was a rather 
odd .sort of a practical joke, gotten up for their entertain- 
ment ; and they accordingly forgave it and one and all con- 
gratulated the newly made man and wife with merry 
smiles and playful reproaches at the species of humbug- 
gerv that had been practiced upon them. 

They never knew any better either, for the only two out- 


112 ELECTHA . 

side parties that could have enlightened them, held their 

peace. 

Those two were Electra Dean and Barry Tempest, who, 
in the course of three weeks, were also married, and were 
so far enriched by Mr. and Mrs. Ray Sylvane that they set 
up to housekeeping in a little cottage belonging to the 
estate of Silver Bend in a style that Granny Dean de- 
clared, “Did beat everything that ever she had expected 
that she and ‘ Lee and Barry Tempest would come to.” 

[the end.] 



MUNRO'S LIBRARY. 


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1 A Dreadful Temptation 20 

2 The Bride of the Tomb 20 

3 An Old Man’s Darling 20 

4 Queenie’o Terrible Secret 20 

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6 Little Golden’s Daughter 20 

7 The Rose and The Lily 20 

8 Countess Vera 20 

0 Bonnie Dora 20 

10 Guy Kaumore’s Wife . 20 

GEORGE ELIOT’S WORKS. 

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12 Silas Marner, 10 

13 Felix Holt, the Radical - 20 

14 The Mill on the Floss 20 

15 Brother Jacob 10 

10 Adam Bede 20 

17 Romola 20 

18 Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos Barton 10 

19 Daniel Deronda 20 

20 Middlemarch- 20 

21 Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story. *•••» 10 

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29 In Peril of His Life, by Gaboriau 20 

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31 Molly Bawn, by the “Duchess ” 20 

32 Portia, by the “ Duchess ” 20 

33 Kit: A Memory, by James Payn 20 

34 East Lynne, by Mrs. Henry Wood 20 

35 Her Mother’s Sin, by Bertha M. Clay 10 

86 A Princess of Thule, by William Black 20 

37 Phyllis, by the “ Duchess ” 20 

38 David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens 20 

39 Very Hard Cash, by Charles Reade 20 

40 Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott 20 

41 Shirley, by Miss Bronte 20 

42 The Last Days of Pompeii, by Bulwer Lytton 20 

43 Charlotte Temple, by Miss Rawson 10 

44 Dora Thorne, by Bertha M. Clay 20 

45 Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens 20 

46 Camille, by "Alexandre Dumas, Jr 10 

47 The Three Guardsmen, by Alexandre Dumas 20 

48 Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte 20 

49 Romance of a Poor Young Man, by Feuillet 10 

50 Back to the Old Home, by Mary Cecil Hay 10 

51 Maggie; or, The Loom Girl of Lowell, by W. M. Turner. 20 

52 Two Wedding Rings, by Margaret Blount 20 

58 Led Astray, by Helen M. Lewis 20 

54 A Woman’s Atonement, by Adah M. Howard 20 

55 False, by Geraldine Fleming 20 

56 The Curse of Dangerfield, by Elsie Snow 20 

57 Ten Years of His Life, by Eva Evergreen 20 

58 A Woman’s Fault, by Evelyn Gray 20 

69 Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas 20 

60 A Queen Amongst Women, and Between Two Sins 20 

61 Madolin’s Lover, by Bertha M. Clay 20 

62 Thaddous of Warsaw, by Jane Porter 20 

63 Lucile, by Owen Meredith **, 20 

64 Charles Auchester, by E. Berger 20 

65 A Strange Story, by Bulwer 20 

66 Aurora Floyd, by Miss Braddon 20 

67 Barbara’s History, by Amelia B. Edwards g0 

68 Called to Account, by Annie Thomas ’ 20 

69 Old Myddelton’s Money, by Mary Cecil Hay 20 

70 Thorns and Orange Blossoms, by Bertha M. Clay 10 

71 Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens go 

72 Moths, a Novel, by “ Ouid? ”, gQ 


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77 A Sinless Crime, by Geraldine Fleming 20 

I 78 A Double Marriage, by Beatrice Collensie 20 

79 The Wentworth Mystery, by Watts Phillips 20 

80 Leola Dale’s Fortune, by Geraldine Fleming 20 

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84 Set in Diamonds, by the “ Countess 20 

85 Who Was the Heir ? by Geraldine Fleming 20 

86 Little Golden 20 

i 87 Daughters of Eve, by Paul Meritt 20 

83 The World Between Them, by the “ Countess ” 20 

| 89 Beauty’s Marriage, by Owen Marston 20 

| 90 Sundered Hearts, by Adah M. Howard. 20 

91 A Fatal Wooing, by Laura J. Libbey 20 

I 92 Only a Girl’s Love, by Geraldine Fleming 20 

i 93 Not to be Won, by Mrs. Lenox Bell — 20 

94 Merit Versus Money, by Garnett Marnell 20 

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96 Behind the Silver Veil, by Mrs. Dale 20 

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98 Pauline, by the Author of “ Leonnette’s Secret” 20 

99 Wife or Slave, by the Author of “ Not to be Won .. 20 

100 A Dark Marriage Morn, by Owen Marston ..... 20 

101 Dregs and Froth, by A. H. Wall 20 

102 For Better, For Worse, by Mostyn Durward...,. 20 

103 What Love Will Do, by Annabel Gray 10 

104 Lover and Husband, by Owen Marston 20 

105 As Fate Would Have It, by Evelyn Gray.. 20 

106 The Woman in Red, by George W. M. Reynolds , — 10 

107 Doubly Wronged, by Adah M. Howard 20 

108 The Eyrie, and The Mystery of a Young Girl 20 

109 Gabrielle, by Louise McCarthy 20 

110 Sweet as a Rose, by Mostvn Durward 20 


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112 A Waif of the Sea 

113 The Huntsford Fortune, 

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115 Jessie Deane 

116 A Golden Mask 

117 Accord and Discord 

118 A Death-bed Marriage., 


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123 Life and Memoirs of Sarah Barnum 10 

124 Marjorie’s Child, by Author of “ Only a School Girl ” 20 

125 A Coachman’s Love, by Herbert Bernard 20 

126 A Dangerous Game, by Ida Linn Girard 10 

127 His Wedded Wife 10 

128 Uncle Ned’s Cabin, by Adah M. Howard 20 

129 Count of Monte-Christo, Part I, by Alex. Dumas 20 

130 Count of Monte-Christo, Part II, by Alex. Dumas 20 

131 A Blighted Home, by Adah M. Howard 10 

132 The Child Wife, by Adah M. Howard 10 

133 The Beautiful Rivals 10 

134 For a Dream’s Sake, by Mrs. Herbert Martin 20 

135 Mark Seaworth, by William H. G. Kingston 20 

136 Regimental Legends, by J. S. Winter 20 

137 The Heidenmauer, by J. Fenimore Cooper 20 

138 Susan Drummond, by Mrs. J. H. Riddell 20 

139 Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, by John Saunders 20 

140 Charles O’Malley, Part I, by Charles Lever 20 

141 Charles O’Malley, Part II, by Charles Lever 20 

142 The Flirt, by Mrs. Grey 20 

143 The Ministers Wife, by Mrs. Oliphant 20 

144 A Terrible Temptation, by Charles Reade 20 

145 The New Abelard, by Robert Buchanan 10 

146 The Monastery, by Sir Walter Scott 20 

147 The Abbot, sequel to “ The Monastery,” by Sir W. Scott. 20 

148 Leila, by Geo. W. M. Reynolds 20 

149 Karaman, sequel to “ Leila,” by Geo. W. M. Reynolds!” 20 

150 Sarah Barnum’s Answer 10 

151 The Queen’s Book, Victoria R. I 10 

152 John Brown’s Legs 20 

153 Berlin Society [*’** jq 

154 Beyond Pardon ..... !.!!.! 20 

155 Life’s Joys, by Emile Zola. Translated by K. Phiip.. !!!.!! 20 

156 The Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue - 30 

157 Harry Lorrequer, by Charles Lever 10 

158 It Is Never Too Late To Mend, by Charles Reade ..!!! 20 

159 The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue. Complete 30 

160 Tom Burke, of ki Ours,” by Charles Lever. Complete 20 


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162 Put Yourself In His Place, by Charles Reade 20 

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164 Enemies Born, by Laura C. Ford 20 

165 Not Like Other Girls, by Rosa Nouchette Carey 20 

166 The Midshipman, Marmaduke Merry, by W.H.G. Kingston 20 

167 Jack’s Courtship, by W. Clark Russell 20 

168 An Old Man's Love, by Anthony Trollope 10 

169 The Octoroon, by Miss M. E. Braddon 10 

170 John Bull and His Island, by Max O’Rell 10 

171 “ Airy Fairy Lilian,” by the author of “ Phyllis ” 20 

172 The Clique of Gold, by Emile Gaboriau 20 

173 Beauty’s Daughters, by the “Duchess” 20 

174 For Her Dear Sake, by Mary Cecil Hay 20 

175 Vixen, by Miss M. E. Braddon 20 

176 The New Magdalen, by Wilkie Collins 10 

177 White Wings. A Yachting Romance, by Wm. Black... 20 

178 The Arundel Motto, by Mary Cecil Hay 20 

179 Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens 20- 

180 The Sun Maid, by Miss Grant 20 

181 Maid, Wife or Widow ? by Mrs. Alexander 10 

182 Cornin’ Thro’ the Rye, by Helen B. Mathers 20 

183 Nancy, by Rhoda Broughton 20 

184 Hidden Perils, by Mary Cecil Hay 20 

185 A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens 20 

186 The Wooing O’t, by Mrs. Alexander 20 

187 Which Loved Him Best, by Bertha M. Clay 10 

188 A Sailor’s Sweetheart, by W. Clark Russell 20 

189 Friendship, by “ Ouida ” 20 

190 Griffith Gaunt, by Charles Reade 20 

191 Lord Lynne’s Choice, by Bertha M. Clay 10 

192 Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens 20 

193 Barbara; or, Splendid Misery, by Miss M. E. Braddon... 20 

194 My First Offer, by Mary Cecil Hay 10 

195 Which Shall It Be ? by Mrs. Alexander 20 

196 Pascarel, by “Ouida ” 20 

197 The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins 20 

198 A Woman-Hater, by Charles Reade 20 

199 A Little Pilgrim, by Mrs. Oliphant 10 

200 Signa, by “ Ouida ” 20 

201 Readiana, by Charles Reade 20 

202 The Mysteries of Louis Napoleon’s Court, by Emile Zola. 20 

203 The Way of the World, by David Christie Murray 20 

204 Wild Oats, by Henry Greville 20 

205 Agnes Sorel, by G. P. R James 20 

206 Claire and the Forge-Master, by Georges Ohnet 20 

207 The Man She Cared For, by F. W. Robinson 20 

208 Pretty Miss Neville, by B. M. Croker 20 

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JNO. 


MRS. ALEX. MCVEIGH MILLER'S WORKS. 

1. A Dreadful Temptation 

“ 2. The Bride of the Tomb 20 

“ 3. An Old Man’s Darling 20 

** 4. Queenie’s Terrible Secret 20 

“ 5. Jaquelina 20 

“ 6. Little Golden’s Daughter 20 

“ 7. The Rose and the Lily 20 

8. Countess Vera 20 

“ 9. Bonnie Dora 20 

“ 10. Guy Kenmore’s Wife 20 

GEORGE ELIOT’S WORKS. 

“ 11. Janet’s Repentance 10 * 

“ 12. Silas Marner 10 

“ 13. Felix Holt, the Radical 20 “ 

“ 14. The Mill on the Floss 20 

“ 15. Brother Jacob 10 * 

“ 16. Adam Bede 20 “ 

“ 17. Romola 20 “ 

“ 18. Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos Barton 10 “ 

“ 19. Daniel Deronda 20 “ 

“ 20. Middlemarch 20 “ 

“ 21. Mr. Gilfll’s Love Story • 10 “ 

“ 22. The Spanish Gypsy 20 “ 

“ 23. Impressions of Theophrastus Such 10 “ 

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 

“ 24. The Two Orphans. By D’Ennery 10 “ 

“ 25. Yolande. By William Black 20 “ 

“ 26. Lady Audley’s Secret. By Miss Braddon 20 “ 

“ 27. When the Ship Comes Home. By Besant & Rice 10 “ 

“ 28. John Halifax, Gentleman. By Miss Mulock 20 “ 

“ 29. In Peril of his Life By Gaborlau 20 “ 

“ 30. The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid... : 10 “ 

“ 31. Molly Bawn. By the Duchess 20 “ 

“ 32. Portia. By the Duchess 20 “ 

“ 33. Kit: a Memory. By James Payne 20 “ 

“ 34. East Lynne. By Mrs. Henry Wood 20 “ 

“ 35. Her Mother’s Sin. By Bertha M. Clay 10 “ 

“ 36. A Princess of Thule. By William Black 20 “ 

“ 37. Phyllis. By the Duchess 20 “ 

“ 38. David Copperfleld. By Charles Dickens 20 “ 

“ 39. Very Hard Cash. By Charles Reade 20 “ 

“ 40. Ivanhoe. By Sir Walter Scott 20 “ 

“ 41. Shirley. By Miss Bronte 20 “ 

“ 42. The Last Days of Pompeii. By Bulwer Lytton 20 “ 

“ 43. Charlotte Temple. By Miss Rowson 10 “ 

“ 44. Dora Thorne. By Bertha M. Clay 20 “ 

“ 45. Old Curiosity Shop. By Charles Dickens 20 “ 

“ 46. Camille. By Alex. Dumas. Jr 10 “ 

“47. The Three Guardsmen. By Alex. Dumas 20 “ 

“ 48. Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte 20 “ 

“ 49. Romance of a Poor Young Man. By Feuillet 10 “ 

“ 50. Back to the Old Home. By Mary Cecil Hay 10 “ 

“ 51. Maggie; or, the Loom Girl of Lowell. By William Mason Turner, M. D.20 “ 

“ 52. Two Wedding Rings. By Margaret Blount 20 “ 

“ 53. Led Astray. By Helen M. Lewis 20 “ 

“ 54. A Woman’s Atonement. By Adah M. Howard .20 “ 

“ 55. False. By Geraldine Fleming 20 “ 

“ 56. The Curse of Dangerfield. By Elsie Snow 20 “ 

“ 57. Ten Years of His Life. By Eva Evergreen 20 “ 

“ 58. A Woman’s Fault. By Evelyn Gray 20 

“ 59. Twenty Years After. By Alex. Dumas 20 “ 

60. A Queen Amongst Women and Between Two Sins. By Bertha M. Clay .20 “ 


61. Madolin’s Lover. By Bertha M. Clay, 

“ 62. Thaddeus of Warsaw. By Jane Porter 

“ 63. Lucile. By Owen Meredith 

“ 64. Charles Auchester. By E. Berger 

“ 65. A Strange Story. By Bulwer 

“ 66. Aurora Floyd. By Miss Braddon 

“ 67. Barbara’s History. By Amelia B. Edwards. 

" 68. Called to Account. By Annie Thomas 

“ 69. Old Myddleton’s Money. By Mary Cecil Hay 

“ 70. Thorns and Orange Blossoms. By Bertha M. Clay. Complete 10 

Remember that we do not charge extra for postage. Munro’s Library will be 
sent to any part of the world, single numbers for 10 cents, double numbers for 
20 cents. 

NORMAN L. M TT1 *RO, PUBLISHER, 

24 & 26 Vandewater St., N. Y. 


■ 60 £: 


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